6G BSS Technologies

White Paper on 6G BSS Technologies
Jointly released by:
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Authors
AsiaInfo Technologies
Institute for AI Industry Research, Tsinghua University
China Telecom Research Institute
China Mobile Information Technology Center
China Unicom Software Research Institute
China Broadcasting Network Mobile Network Co., Ltd.
Intel (China) Co., Ltd.
Cite This White Paper
White Paper on 6G BSS Technologies, Ye Ouyang, Yaqin Zhang, Peng Wang, Yunxin
Liu, Wen Qiao, Jun Zhu, Yang Liu, Feng Zhang, Shuling Wang, et al. July 2023.
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Contents
I. Preface ........................................................................................................ 7
II. Evolution of CSP Business and BSS ..................................................... 11
2.1 BSS Characteristics in Communication Generation ........................................11
2.2 Conclusion of BSS Evolution ..........................................................................20
III. 6G Business Support Model ................................................................ 21
3.1 New BSS Requirements of 6G Typical Scenarios ...........................................22
3.2 Reference Framework of BSS .........................................................................25
3.2.1 Business Support Framework from Telecommunication Organizations
......................................................................................................................25
3.2.2 Business Support Reference from Internet Industry ............................29
3.2.3 BSS Evolution and Planning of Operators...........................................33
3.3 6G Domain-based Business Support Model for Digital Innovation ................35
IV. Overall Vision of 6G BSS ..................................................................... 40
V. 6G BSS Potential Technologies ............................................................. 44
5.1 6G BSS Technical Framework ........................................................................46
5.2 6G BSS Key Technologies ..............................................................................48
5.2.1 Total Experience Upgrade Based on Intelligent Customer Avatars ....48
5.2.2 Upgrade of Interaction Methods Based on Intention Perception .........49
5.2.3 Visual Operation Based on Intelligent Digital Twins ..........................50
5.2.4 Automated Operations Based on Self-adaptive AI ..............................52
5.2.5 Distributed Application Based on Cloud-edge-terminal Integration ...52
5.2.6 Native Network Security Based on Blockchain Trusted Identity
Authentication ..............................................................................................53
5.2.7 Minimalist Development Based on Super Automation and Platform
Engineering...................................................................................................54
5.2.8 Automatic Operation & Maintenance Based on Digital Immune
System ..........................................................................................................56
5.2.9 Data Capitalization Based on Data Fabric ...........................................57
5.2.10 Maximizing Data Value Based on Privacy Computing .....................60
5.2.11 PaaS Capability Evolution Based on Sustainable Cloud Computing
Model ............................................................................................................62
5.2.12 Cloudified Architecture Based on High Performance Computing ....64
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5.2.13 Intelligent Ubiquitous Scheduling of Computing Power Based on

Different Hardware Platforms ......................................................................67
VI. 6G BSS Potential Architecture Evolution .......................................... 69
6.1 6G BSS Design Methodology..........................................................................69
6.2 6G BSS Architecture Overview .......................................................................72
VII. 6G BSS Engineering Principles and Recommendations ................. 78
7.1 5G BSS Architecture and Extensibility ...........................................................79
7.2 Recommendations for Evolution towards 6G BSS ..........................................80
7.2.1 Business-driven Gradual Evolution .....................................................81
7.2.2 Evolution Based on Open Architecture ...............................................81
7.2.3 Full Migration to Public Cloud/on-Premise Cloud ..............................81
7.2.4 Native Network Security System .........................................................82
7.2.5 Independent Evolution of Interaction Layer ........................................83
7.2.6 Synchronization of Business, Data and Intelligence ............................83
7.2.7 Rapidly Empower Enterprise Customer through Ecosystem ...............84
VIII. Summary and Prospect ..................................................................... 85
Bibliography ................................................................................................ 87
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List of Figures
Figure 2-1 Intergenerational Characteristics of BSS of Operators .................................................... 11
Figure 3-1 Business Model of Communication Operators ................................................................21
Figure 3-2 eTOM Model of TM Forum ............................................................................................28
Figure 3-3 ODA Functional Architecture of TM Forum ...................................................................28
Figure 3-4 Business Model for Web3.0.............................................................................................31
Figure 3-5 4C Model of Communication Business ...........................................................................32
Figure 4-1 BSS Vision for 6G ...........................................................................................................40
Figure 5-1 Potential Key Technologies of 6G BSS ...........................................................................44
Figure 5-2 6G BSS Technical Framework ........................................................................................46
Figure 5-3 Decentralized Identity Solution Based on Blockchain ....................................................54
Figure 5-4 Platform Engineering Technology ...................................................................................56
Figure 5-5 Digital Immune System Technology ...............................................................................57
Figure 5-6 Data Fabric Technology ..................................................................................................59
Figure 5-7 Schematic Diagram of Secure Multi-party Computing ...................................................61
Figure 5-8 Schematic Diagram of Federated Learning .....................................................................62
Figure 6-1 PDCA Operation Management Model ............................................................................70
Figure 6-2 6G BSS Reference Architecture ......................................................................................76
Figure 7-1 Status of 5G BSS Five-tier Architecture .........................................................................79
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List of Tables
Table 3-1 Operator Business Model for the 6G Era ..........................................................................38
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I. Preface
With the evolution of communication technology from 1G to 5G, operators have also
experienced changes from the era of telecom services to consumer Internet and then
industrial Internet. The diversification and specialization of the information and commu-
nication business offer operators new avenues of development. As the digital economy
gains momentum in boosting global economic growth, traditional CSP (communication
service provider) operators are prioritizing integrated development of ICT (Information
and Communication Technology) infrastructure and business, upgrading cloud network
infrastructure, creating a new business model of cloud-network integration, and actively
promoting the digital and intelligent transformation of the whole industry to empower
the development of global digital economy [1].
In the 1990s, the commercialization of the Internet began a new era of digital economy,
known as Web1.0, characterized by the “Internet of information” and personal comput-
ers. 1G/2G digital technologies just began to replace analog technology to provide voice
communication, and mobile communication and the Internet were completely independ-
ent from each other. In 2004, the Web2.0 era, or the era of “interactive Internet” began,
allowing users to not only consume information, but publish their own content on the
Internet. The 3G/4G mobile communication technologies enabled the public to share text
and pictures through smart mobile terminals, leading to the rise of mobile Internet with
better experience and bringing great commercial benefits to operators. This ultimately
led to the consumer Internet which constitutes the foundation of digital economy. With
5G commercialization, operators are accelerating their transformation into digital ser-
vice operators, hoping to seize the opportunities brought by digital economy as builders
of digital infrastructure and enablers of industrial digital and intelligent transformation.
According to G20 Digital Economy Development and Cooperation Initiative adopted by
G20 leaders at the G20 Summit in September 2016, the digital economy refers to a broad
range of economic activities that use digitized information and knowledge as the key
factor of production, modern information networks as the important activity space, and
information and communication technology as an important driver for efficiency-en-
hancing and economic structural optimization[2]. On September 4, 2019, the United
Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) released its first Digital
Economy Report, stating that an entirely new “data value chain” has evolved, and
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businesses that build digital platforms have a major advantage in the data-driven
economy [3]. With the advantages of the Internet of Everything in the 5G network, oper-
ators are promoting cloud-network collaboration and computing and network conver-
gence, while establishing computing-aware networks based on their cloud-network in-
frastructure resources. The operators will also promote the digital upgrading of thou-
sands of industries through a strong government & enterprise customer base and the
ever-increasing integrated solution capability, which will create a medium- and long-
term expansion engine for operators and lay the foundation for the sustainable and high-
quality business development. In addition, the combination of 5G and artificial intelli-
gence (AI) has been regarded by the industry as the latest generation of general purpose
technologies, which will boost productivity and empower vertical industries, and accel-
erate the development of AI in the communication ecology domain over the next decade
[4]
.
In the evolution from 5G to 6G, the development of Internet and IT (Information Tech-
nology) provides strong support for the informatization of 6G-oriented CT (Communi-
cation Technology). Based on this, DOICT (Data, Operation, Information and commu-
nication technologies) convergence will be the core of digital technology innovation in
the future and the evolution direction of digital information infrastructure. Web3.0 pro-
posed in 2014, which represents the next generation of a decentralized Internet, aims to
realize “those who create will own” through decentralized technologies such as block-
chain so as to break up the current monopoly of Internet companies and reshape the
Internet value chain. Users own the content and data they created, and the value gener-
ated thereof can also be distributed as per the agreement between the platform and users.
[5]
Therefore, Web3.0 is also called the “Internet of Value” . The metaverse based on
Web3.0 is a virtual world that is linked and created by means of technology, mapped and
interacted with the real world, and a digital living space with a new social system. It can
be said that it is a new type of Internet application and social form that integrates multiple
new technologies. In the ideal metaverse, the digital world will be as important as the
real world. Inside the metaverse, users can enter the digital world at any time by utilizing
digital avatars and confirming their identity through the use of Internet tokens, and they
also have more extensive control over their personal data. Although communication op-
erators have established their position in the digital economy by developing 4G and 5G
networks in the Web2.0 era, and won corresponding opportunities in consumer business
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and enterprise-level business respectively, they are plagued by bottlenecks in the tradi-
tional consumer business and diversified demands of enterprise-level business, which
cannot be settled by a single communication technology in a closed loop. In this context,
communication operators hope to develop 6G network technology that is more efficient,
cost-effective, and can support novel business models. This is in response to consumers’
constant demand for better experience, the vertical industry’s need for high-quality and
flexible radio networks, and the vision of innovative development through Web3.0 busi-
ness model. The metaverse has huge demands for computing and network resources. The
massive real-time information interaction and immersive experience of the metaverse on
the infrastructure need to be based on the continuous improvement of communication
technology and computing power. As the main provider of computing and network ser-
vices, operators can undoubtedly enhance the perceptual and intelligent capacities of 6G
networks to effectively connect computing power services to support new application,
and establish a crucial position in the metaverse by taking the initiative to become service
[6]
providers of metaverse infrastructure . In addition, in the 6G era, operators need to
further integrate the relevant DOICT to realize the business support capability of com-
puting and network convergence, and develop diversified value-added business through
“connection + computing power + capability” based on their profound network technol-
ogy and operation technology, so as to better meet the development of next-generation
Internet applications.
To sum up, in developing 6G networks and continuously transforming into digital ser-
vice providers, communication operators also pay attention to new business models
brought about by the development of the next-generation Internet and IT while focusing
on the intergenerational research of communication technology. They should also up-
grade from “network-centric” to “business and service centric” and “customer-centric”
according to the basic laws of digital economy. The upgrade of IT support system, which
carries business development and operation, will also be an important part of its own
transformation. The traditional IT support system of operators includes three subsystems:
business support system (BSS), operation support system (OSS) and management sup-
port system (MSS), which are interrelated and bear different responsibilities. However,
with the improvement of 6G network capability, the market demand is more extensive
and the competition is more intense, which requires to further strengthen BSS and OSS
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integration regarding basic 6G computing and network services, to improve the opera-
tional efficiency and benefits of customers by vertically connecting the digital intelli-
gence support capabilities on both sides of supply and demand, and to further integrate
BSS and MSS so as to horizontally connect the whole business process from strategy to
implementation and realize business innovation.
This White Paper will focus on business requirements of operators in the 6G era, as well
as how they evolve and upgrade their digital BSS to realize sustainable business inno-
vation.
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II. Evolution of CSP Business and BSS

BSS refers to a CSP business supporting system, which usually consists of a set of soft-
ware and hardware components that support the operation, management and mainte-
nance activities of telecom service providers and provide customer-oriented services [7,8].
The main modules of BSS include customer management, order management, product
management, tariff management, expense management, etc., which can help operators
automate and optimize business processes, improve business efficiency and customer
service quality, and reduce operation costs and risks. In the digital economy era, opera-
tors have been integrating Internet-related technologies with the development of com-
munication technology to expand their business domain and promote the synchronous
evolution of BSS, as shown in Figure 2-1. Due to the intergenerational upgrade of the
communication technology, the main business of operators in the same period gradually
moves from communication service to digital service oriented to Internet of Everything.
BSS has also evolved into the cloudified architecture, thus more effectively supporting
the business expansion and innovation of operators.
Figure 2-1 Intergenerational Characteristics of BSS of Operators
2.1 BSS Characteristics in Communication Generation

1G BSS: Monolithic architecture
In 1973, Motorola developed the first simulated handheld terminal, marking the begin-
ning of mobile communication business which later expanded to Japan, Europe, the
[9]
United States and China successively . In the 1G era, devices and networks at their
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primary stage of development had limited capacities and could only support voice com-
munication. Devices and handheld terminals were too expensive to be widely used for
civilian purpose. Therefore, the business system mainly provided support for phone
numbers based on voice business, including basic functions such as number management,
number selection, monthly billing, opening of selected number, number billing and fee
collection.
The 1st generation BSS back then was still in the initial phase in terms of capability
support, so the single server solution was enough to meet the demand. At that time, the
computer system was not advanced, and the application systems were all independent of
each other, with no layered service or modern databases and Web servers. Application
codes were usually written in C, Fortran, COBOL, dBASE (and compatible products),
compiled into single executable files, or run by script loading.
2G BSS: Three-tier architecture and monolithic service

In 1982, the GSM specifications were formulated for mobile communication, and the
2G era began. After the 1G GSM commercialization, and the inter-generational devel-
opment of 2.5G GPRS and 2.75G EDGE, the digitization and informatization of com-
munication technology and the large-scale chip integration technology addressed the
problems of expensive device, roaming and insufficient spectrum. Mobile communica-
tion became popular among people with a wider range of business available, such as
short messages and simple Internet.
Telecommunication Management Forum (TM Forum), established in 1988, is a world-

wide organization that provides strategic suggestions and implementation plans for tel-
ecommunications operation and management. It has been focusing on the technical sys-
tem and operational efficiency of BSS and the revenue capability of operators for many
years. TM Forum put forward the Telecom Operations Map (TOM) model of BSS in the
mid-1990s, which covers business processes such as customer relationship management,
order management, product management, tariff management and expense management
[10]
. The 2G BSS helped operators realize business process optimization and automation
by reference to the business flow chart and related standards in TOM.
This generation of BSS was still positioned to meet the management needs of operators
themselves, but has begun to seek breakthroughs and innovations in customer service
experience. Entering the 2G era, mobile communication business thrived, offering more
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sophisticated business support functions such as SMS, paging, MMS and simple Internet
access.
The functional design of BSS has the following characteristics:
 BSS began to split into business, billing and customer service subsystems, in
which the business system was responsible for completing the sales, changes
and payment of mobile phones, numbers and services, the billing system was
responsible for completing the data collection, measurement, pricing and billing,
and the customer service system was responsible for supporting customer
service by separating the traffic from the system.
 A new cooperation paradigm was introduced. In the 2G era, partners began to

join the service, but it was mainly value-added service provided based on
language and short messages, and BSS mainly provided settlement for value-
added service providers.
[11]
 A user-centered customer-user-account model was initiated in terms of
system design. With the prosperity of business, there were a surge of users, and
the characterization of users’ attributes in various dimensions was getting more
complex, such as the merging relationship between users and customers and the
expression of payment relationship of accounts. Therefore, telecom operators
put forward a customer-user-account model to adapt to the complicated
payment scenarios and the merging management of users according to
customers at that time.
In terms of technical support, BSS has the following characteristics:
 Three-tier architecture: In the 2G era, the design philosophy of “high

cohesion, low coupling” in software architecture emerged, aiming to establish
a clear division of labor, promote reuse of functions and clarify business logic,
so as to speed up development, improve development efficiency and facilitate
maintenance. For this reason, the communication business support system
began to adopt the three-tier application architecture [presentation layer (UI),
business logic layer (BLL) and data access layer (DAL), accessible to each
other through interfaces], which greatly promoted the business system
standards and laid a foundation for large-scale development of the system, as
well as a good foundation for the further differentiation of the subsequent
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technical architecture and the formation of standard components. Personal

computers appeared in this period, and the launch of desktop systems such as
windows/xwindows provided physical and technical support for the rapid
development of BSS.
 Business-level siloed application: In the 2G era, no systematic business

operation support theory was formed in the communication field. In the face of
rapid business development, the iteration speed of business system was
obviously lagging behind. During the business development, the business
operation support system was divided into business, billing, customer service
and other systems, each of which was based on a three-tier architecture system,
and a separate C/S version was established through a middleware system. The
data, services and interfaces were independent of each other, and interface
communication was adopted between systems [12].
3G BSS: Service convergence

The 3G network integrated radio communication with Internet and other multimedia
communication technologies, enabling the provision of voice and high-speed data ser-
vices simultaneously on a global scale. During this era, smart phones became increas-
ingly prevalent, and information services and multimedia services emerged one after
another, such as browsing web pages on mobile devices, sending and receiving emails,
making video calls and watching live streams. Various Apps have been constantly up-
dated and iterated, and the multimedia era has arrived. In order to respond to the market
in time and effectively organize resources to form products/services, communication op-
erators began to provide converged services. The business system quickly configured
the combination of different products and tariffs to form new products so as to meet the
flexible changes of market strategies. In this context, the product-commodity model
evolved, including product specifications, attribute specifications, attribute values, com-
modity specifications, tariff specifications, among others. Product specifications and
commodity specifications can include different attribute specifications and be config-
ured with different attribute values. Commodities may incorporate different products, as
well as different tariff specifications as their components. The product-commodity
model is the core of the business operation system.
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With the development of the telecom industry and advancement in technology, TOM
framework has gradually shown weaknesses, e.g. its limited management scope and dif-
ficulty in supporting emerging technologies. Therefore, TM Forum put forward the
eTOM (enhanced Telecom Operations Map) framework in 2001 as an improved and up-
graded version of the TOM framework. The eTOM framework is designed to be more
comprehensive, flexible and modern, extending and updating the TOM framework. The
eTOM framework covers all business activities of telecom operators, including customer
management, business development, operation management, resource management,
quality management, among others, and it can support various traditional and emerging
technologies.
With the TOM framework as the predecessor and basis, the eTOM framework is the
evolution and upgrade of the TOM framework, providing more best practices and stand-
ardized business processes. The eTOM framework has become an international standard
of telecom service management, and has been widely used in the management practice
of telecom operators. Thanks to the eTOM framework, the 3G BSS can provide telecom
operators with more comprehensive and in-depth business process management and op-
timization.
At this phase, with the increasing competition in the communication market, operators
began to turn to customer-centric, committed to providing customers with better pre-sale,
sale and after-sale services. In addition, in terms of cooperation paradigm, BSS began to
provide comprehensive management of upstream and downstream partners, including
partner life cycle management, partner product management, partner settlement man-
agement, etc.
At this phase, the design of BSS has the following characteristics:
 More comprehensive functional coverage: Supporting voice, SMS, MMS, data

and other services, and providing management of marketing, channels,
customers, customer service, orders, products/commodities, convergent billing,
resources and partners.
 Customer-centric: Although a customer-user-account model was established in

the 2G era, the business was centered on commodities. In the 3G era, due to the
intensified competition, it is necessary to adjust the market strategy in real time
according to the market situation and competitors’ strategies to complete
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various combined commodities, and the marketing business model has changed
from commodity-centered to “customer-centric”, driven by the need to meet
customers’ demands.
Technically, the multi-tier architecture was introduced to support the system design re-
form of BSS: In the 3G era, the application framework shifted from CS to BS, accom-
panied by the transition from Web1.0 to Web2.0. This led to the emergence of MVC
application architecture, in which M stands for model, V stands for view, and C stands
for control. With business segmented and services being reused, control, model and view
layers are subdivided into more layers, and RPC and Restful API open technologies were
developed alongside MVC.
4G BSS: SOA, flow management and digital business

With the enhancement of 4G support, more business potentials have been released, in-
cluding mobile payment, App store, mobile Internet, DiDi ride-hailing service, Meituan
Takeaway, mobile e-commerce, etc. Various new businesses have mushroomed, chang-
ing people’s lives completely by offering a more intelligent lifestyle.
At this phase, operators have shifted from providing customer communication and net-
work connection services to meeting customers’ comprehensive information service
needs. In order to better seize the booming development opportunities of mobile Internet
and cope with the challenge of the rising OTT vendors, operators have begun to cooper-
ate with mainstream Internet service providers in depth. Therefore, BSS has higher re-
quirements in supporting the openness and automation of value chain cooperation.
At this phase, the functional design of BSS has the following characteristics:
 Flow management capability is introduced: It serves as the key to adapt to

the development law of mobile Internet, grasp the development opportunity of
mobile Internet and change the operators’ role as “plumber” in the Internet era.
Flow management has promoted the transformation of operators to information
service providers and fundamentally reshaped the value creation approach of
telecom operators.
 Digital business innovation: In the digital age where data has become a
valuable asset, it’s natural for the operators to extend their business via
datalization, i.e., using the collected data for the business or the product itself.
It includes two levels, data intelligence and data innovation. As for the data
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intelligence, big data technology is used to enhance product experience, such as

recommending system and credit rating. As for the data innovation, the
accumulated data is mainly used to develop new business. The essence of digital
business is the productization, commercialization and valuation of data.
 New three-party model [13]: With the monetization of ebb tide services, service
owners provide services for service users by using their own surplus service
value, and more services can be monetized by service users paying directly or
through third party payment service. The three-party relationship involved in
this monetization is different from the previous customer-user-account model
in the 2G era, forming a new three-party model relationship, that is, the many-
to-many relationship among the owner, the user and the payer. Among them,
the owner can own the products of multiple operators, and these products can
be used by users different from the owner. The bills from different owners can
be paid by the users themselves or through different payers, and users can even
pay part of the bills from different owners through different payers, thus
forming a very complicated and flexible many-to-many relationship.
Technically, BSS has introduced the current new computer application development
mode, presenting the following characteristics:
 SOA architecture: In order to support a large number of innovative services in

the 4G era, BSS has adopted the SOA architecture, and introduced technologies
such as enterprise service bus (ESB), microservice centralization, and business
middle platform. The essence of the SOA is to improve service reuse, realize
flexible and standardized management and rapid self-adaptive elastic scalability,
accelerate rapid business iteration and meet market demand quickly.
 Building a big data center: Mobile Internet services have brought massive
unstructured data to operators, including behavior data, access data, etc. In order
to release the data value, explore business opportunities, discover users’
consumption habits, and reasonably recommend more services, operators have
introduced big data centers, and then concentrated on analysis and processing
according to business needs.
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5G BSS: Service cloudification and value network

In the 5G era, the communication network infrastructure is moving away from special-
ized hardware platform towards the widespread adoption of basic hardware architectures
such as x86, ARM and others. The commercialization of the 5G network technology has
further enriched the application scenarios, creating application foundations including in-
dustrial Internet, autonomous driving, AR/VR, metaverse and so on. At this phase, while
fully meeting the needs of individual customers, operators began to focus on the infor-
mation service demands of government/enterprise customers. In addition, from the per-
spective of cooperation paradigm, the partners at this phase are more diverse, including
vertical industry partners, various ISPs, etc. Therefore, BSS business has also changed
from supporting the cooperation paradigm centered on operators to supporting the oper-
ation partner network paradigm.
At this phase, the functional design of BSS has the following characteristics:
 Government-enterprise model and SKU model: In order to better support the

2B services, BSS began to strengthen the government-enterprise model. In
addition, due to the highly integrated and mixed characteristics of Internet-
based and telecom-based commodities, telecom operators have also added
SKU-related models (including related complete sets of models, such as SPU)
to BSS to track inventory and determine the sales price and inventory level of
the goods.
 Strengthening the marketing and service of government & enterprise

customers: There are a large number of ToB-oriented services in the 5G era,
and indicators such as latency, bandwidth, connections and reliability are more
personalized. Therefore, starting with the industry user business, the 5G era
features the focus on industry user ecology and promotes BSS innovation.
 Emphasizing the application of small-fast-flexible innovation: 5G has

solved various network reliability problems for industry users, and has actually
built scenario ecologies for users through combination with matured cloud
technology and the emerging edge cloud. In these scenario ecologies, many
mature Internet and mobile Internet capabilities and services have been or will
be integrated, so in order to meet the urgent needs of industry users, developers
18
can use these scenario ecologies to quickly build industry application

capabilities.
 Value network [14]: Value network is the expansion and promotion of the value
chain. The value network is to reconstruct the original value chain around the
customer value, and it is a network of connections and exchanges of multiple
value chains in multiple links through the interaction between different levels
and different subjects in the network. The network formed by these
relationships will generate network effects, and individuals or organizations at
each network node can create or gain more value from this aggregation. The
functional design of the 5G BSS has taken the support for the value network
into consideration, and has made various explorations in maintaining the
customer ecology.
The technical system of cloud computing has been incorporated into the system archi-
tecture of BSS, specifically including:
 Business cloudification: Including two characteristics, i.e. cloud-edge

integration and cloud native. In order to address the timeliness and security of
the 5G industrial control, cloud services have evolved into cloud and edge cloud,
and in order to meet businesses’ demand for elasticity and flexibility, a large
number of cloud native technologies such as Docker technology and K8s
dynamic scalability are introduced.
 Full intelligence injection: Cloud networks convergence and scenario ecology

in the 5G era result in a very complicated system from the perspectives of
technology, business, operation and management. From the perspective of
underlying technical support, the assistance of AI is needed in addressing
numerous challenges, such as how to quickly locate and deal with system fault
(if any), how to allocate numerous resources according to the needs of industry
users, what types and levels of resources shall be allocated appropriately, how
to charge the allocated resources appropriately, what kind of application
capability shall be allocated to users reasonably, and what kind of goods shall
be allocated according to market changes.
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2.2 Conclusion of BSS Evolution

By reviewing the main services of operators in the process of intergenerational upgrad-
ing of communication technologies and analyzing the evolution of their corresponding
BSS, it can be seen that:
 Service innovation is the main driving force of BSS evolution and development.
Communication services are initially determined by the capabilities of
communication technology, mainly focusing on the capacity of suppliers, and
then gradually transform to the needs of customers, combining with the overall
business trend of the information industry (such as internetization).
 From the perspective of cooperation paradigm, BSS supports “internal and

external double closed loops”. By internally supporting the internal
management and operation of enterprises, it can help enterprises better realize
resource integration and optimization and improve internal collaboration and
cooperation efficiency; by externally supporting the cooperation and
development between enterprises and partners, it can empower the cooperation
and development between enterprises and partners and improve the quality and
efficiency of external cooperation.
 The evolution of BSS architecture is highly related to that of information

technology in the same era, while information technology and communication
technology mutually support and promote each other throughout their evolution
process. For example, the internetization of Web1.0 has driven the development
of broadband technology, the mobilization of Web2.0 mutually promoted by 3G
and 4G technologies, and technologies such as IT cloudification and
containerization have deeply affected the 5G communication technology.
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III. 6G Business Support Model

Considering the evolutionary impact of communication technology for operators’ busi-
ness model, the business models of communication operators at different stages are also
studied and summarized in references [15,16,17,18,19]. As shown in Figure 3-1, in the 4G era
and the previous intergenerational communication era, operators mainly focused on
providing standard communication services to consumers and users at lower cost and
higher RoI (Return of Invesetment). At this phase, operators, as value producers, provide
professional connection services in a vertical communication field based on engineering
functional platforms such as standard network device and OSS. With the simultaneous
evolution of IT and CT, and the mutual penetration and influence, operators have begun
to consider building digital infrastructure for enterprise users in the 5G era. The intro-
duction and landing of the MEC architecture system and private network are the best
evidence of this process. With the landing of communication technologies such as NFV,
SBA and slicing, the communication capability gradually overflows outside the domain,
which brings new value growth space for operators. As a general purpose technology,
6G strengthens the vision of value spillover, and operators need to build an ecological
platform to promote the self-creation and self-evolution of the overall value of the soci-
ety. Therefore, the development of 6G will promote operators to further integrate CT, IT,
DT and OT, build a corresponding open ecology, and create a systematic value-added
business model of total social value.
Figure 3-1 Business Model of Communication Operators
21
3.1 New BSS Requirements of 6G Typical Scenarios

In the past ten years, the mobile communication technology has developed rapidly, and
the network performance indicators have achieved many breakthroughs. The main body
of network connection has also shifted from personal communication to the Internet of
Everything. Rooted in 5G and further improved in 6G, communication technology con-
tinuously enhances connectivity and certainty of network and promotes transition from
mobile Internet to the Intelligence of Everything. This facilitates intelligent interconnec-
tion of people, the physical world and the digital world and provides more space for the
diversity of 6G services. Although there are still many controversies about the architec-
ture, key technologies and business processes of 6G, with the joint efforts of insiders,
the industry has added scenarios such as joint communications and sensing and prolif-
eration of intelligence to the three typical scenarios of the 5G, and sorted out the typical
services of 6G for 2030 [20,21,22,23].
 Immersive cloud XR based on 6G ultra wireless broadband
Tbps peak rate, 10-100Gbps experienced rate, sub-millisecond latency, a

tenfold increase in the density of 5G connections, centimeter-level localization,
millimeter-level imaging, and E2E system reliability based on controllable error
distribution can meet the communication requirements of various immersive
cloud XR services. Immersive business with people-centric approach enables
individuals to engage in work and daily activities through virtual environment
and virtual characters anytime and anywhere; the XR expanded to industries
such as smart security, smart cities, smart factories and data centers will also
accelerate the comprehensive digital transformation of vertical industries and
greatly enhance the productivity.
 Universal IoT and Precise Machine control based on 6G ultra-large-scale

connection
Machine control is a kind of enhanced machine communication. With the

arrival of 6G, combined with the integrated communication method of space
and space, the ubiquitous IoT access and mutual communication of large-scale
sensing devices and robots will be achieved. For example,Many industrial
robots and autonomous robots have a strong demand for environmental
awareness and human-robot communication. In the future, the cooperative
22
machine control system will realize multi-dimensional cooperation between

human, machine and environment based on more precise working environment
and machine motion perception, more intelligent fine control and execution of
more accurate control instruction. Its application scenarios mainly include
smart factories, smart agriculture, smart cities, smart transport, smart energy
and other fields. The business will be supported by tenfold increase in the
density of 5G connections, centimeter-level localization, millimeter-level
imaging, and other 6G network performance advancements.
 Holographic communication based on 6G ultra wireless broadband
Holographic communication service is an overall application solution of data

collection, coding, transmission, rendering and display of high-immersion and
multi-dimensional interactive application scenario based on naked-eye
holographic technology. Consisting of the whole E2E process from data
collection to multi-dimensional sensory data restoration, it is a highly
immersive service form with high degree of natural interaction. With the
comprehensive improvement of 6G network communication capability and the
support of high-resolution terminal display devices, holographic
communication services will be greatly developed and widely used in many
fields such as culture and entertainment, medical health, education and social
production, providing multi-dimensional interactive experience, holographic
digital management, high-quality portrait interaction and other application
services.
 Ultra-high precision positioning based on 6G joint communications and

sensing
The 6G network has sensing function that allows it to provide active positioning
service for communication objects and passive positioning service for non-
communication objects. It uses communication signals to realize sensing
functions such as detection, positioning, recognition and imaging of the targets,
obtain the information of the surrounding environment, and help to complete
the digital virtualization of entities in the environment. Typical scenario
services include precise positioning, environmental reconstruction, security
imaging, drone delivery, and autonomous driving.
23
 Enhancement of interpersonal communication by brain-computer

interface based on 6G proliferation of intelligence
Relying on the future 6G mobile communication network, it is expected to make

breakthroughs in such new research directions as emotional interaction and
brain-computer interaction (brain-computer interface). Intelligent systems with
perceptual, cognitive and even thinking capabilities will completely replace
traditional interactive intelligent devices, and the hierarchical relationship
between people and agents will become human-like interaction that involves
emotions, warmth, and equality. The intelligent system with emotional
interaction capability can monitor the psychological and emotional state of
users through voice dialogue or facial expression recognition, and adjust the
emotion of users in time to avoid health hazards; by manipulating the machine
through the mind or brain to replace some functions of the human body with the
machine, it can also make up for the physical defects of the disabled, maintain
an efficient working state, efficiently acquire knowledge and skills within a
short time, or realize “lossless” brain information transmission.
From the above typical 6G services, it can be seen that by building a 6G network
with native intelligence, operators can upgrade the network connectivity to
information perception and communication capabilities, thus supporting digital
business innovation in thousands of industries more efficiently. Because of the
more open 6G network service capability, operators need to consider some
common characteristics presented by 6G services:
 As the basic underlying demand, the upgrading of network capability will

ensure that complex and diverse network business scenarios can be built on
standardized communication technologies.
 The ultimate network experience and proliferation of intelligence brought

by 6G enable network services to focus more on higher-level innovations
such as modes and scenarios; as a result, pure communication operators are
no longer the core of ecological cooperation.
 The breakthrough of the bottleneck in network connection has made 6G a

solid infrastructure base, the concept of “network as code” has been
implemented, and ecological cooperation and collaborative innovation
24
have become important themes in the 6G era. It can be seen that the 6G
business needs an open 6G network to provide the communication
capability of intelligence of everything, and it also needs to combine
domain knowledge and integrate emerging technologies to empower digital
intelligence upgrades for thousands of industries.
Faced with these changes, operators must further improve digital efficiency and empow-
erment, and transform from communication service provider (CSP) to digital service
provider (DSP) before the advent of the 6G era. The improvement of digital efficiency
means that operators need to optimize the process and framework of BSS, introduce new
technologies, continuously improve the efficiency and scalability of core businesses, and
complete the transformation from omni-channel customer center to automated network
operation center, including intelligent demand decomposition, ultra-automated service
experience, all-round service efficiency evaluation, adaptive service optimization and
other business support closed loops. Due to the improvement of digital empowerment,
operators have to explore how to support a new digital ecosystem in BSS, extending
from the communication field to manufacturing, automotive industry, health industry
and smart cities. Operators will go beyond “pipeline business” and establish “platform
business model”, thus completing the transformation from “building competitive ad-
vantage based on network resources” to “empowering ecology based on network re-
sources”. To this end, operators need to build a more refined product and service system
in conjunction with the ecology to promote business prosperity; BSS needs to support
the rapid iteration and convergence of business cooperation mode to meet the demands
for rapid introduction by partners and opening-up.
3.2 Reference Framework of BSS

3.2.1 Business Support Framework from Telecommunication
Organizations
With the rapid development of the communication industry, BSS of operators is con-
stantly incorporating technical standards of IT industry, establishing its own ecological
organization, and improving the relevant technical standards in different periods with
business development.
25
Around 2009, in order to meet the industry demands amid the ICT convergence trend
and the development of digital media and digital services, TM Forum revised the eTOM
model, removed the label of telecommunications and established the BFM (Business
Process Framework) model which eventually became the business architecture in ODA
(Open Digital Architecture) [24].
Although the IT support system of operators in the early stage has developed rapidly
with the business growth, many problems have been exposed in the process of construc-
tion, deployment and application and some have seriously affected the sustainable de-
velopment of the system. The construction and operation of the operations management
system have a direct impact on the overall cost, management and service of the commu-
nication operations. Therefore, in the process of participating in enterprise information
construction, operators have also begun to apply the general enterprise IT service man-
agement methods and standards. Among them, the ITIL, a process-centered IT manage-
ment industry standard, is a typical standard and method. IT service management over-
sees the full life cycle of IT services, which involves human resources, organizational
structure, management, process and technology, and other aspects, including pre-re-
search, planning and construction, operation & maintenance of IT [25].
On February 27, 2023, the industry-wide initiative plan of GSMA Open Gateway was
grandly released at the Mobile World Congress (MWC 2023). GSMA Open Gateway is
a universal network API framework, which aims to provide a universal access interface,
facilitate developers and cloud service providers to access operators’ networks faster,
and enhance and deploy related services [26]. Currently, in the plan of GSMA Open Gate-
way, eight universal network APIs have been launched, including SIM card exchange,
QoD, device state (access or roaming status), code verification, edge site selection and
routing, code verification (SMS 2FA), operator billing-withdrawal and device location
(verification location). It is expected that more APIs will be launched in 2023 according
to the initiative plan.
With the construction of 5G network, the communication industry is becoming the van-
guard of the digital era, and its information system has also changed from a business
supporter to a business enabler, becoming a tool for operators to fully empower the dig-
ital society. Therefore, facing the evolution of 6G network, operators need to define their
business support capabilities more comprehensively and systematically.
26
On the whole, TM Forum defined the open digital architecture (ODA)[15] in 2019, and
provided a possible system architecture reference for 6G BSS. This architecture intended
to replace the traditional operation support system (OSS) and business support system
(BSS) with a new method, and provides the future-oriented blueprint, language and a set
of key design principles accepted by the industry. ODA mainly includes five parts:
 Business Architecture: Including key business process multi-layer model

(eTOM) that supports efficient and agile operation, and capable of mapping
business capability and value stream.
 Information System Architecture: Including functional architecture and data

architecture (SID) that support loose coupling, being capable of providing
standard information definitions among operators, suppliers and other partners.
 Implementation Architecture: Including more than 50 REST-based Open

APIs, and capable of realizing the interoperability of standardized IT system;
supporting reused and simply integrated ODA components. Standardized data
models can also help achieve AI operation and maintenance.
 Deployment & Runtime Environment: Using Canvas to support the running

of plug-and-play ODA components, providing standard technical framework
and DevOps support, and making verification by continuous deployment in
laboratory test environment.
 E2E Governance: Providing related principles, design guidelines, metadata,

and agile management tools covering the full life cycle of the architecture.
Through the collaboration of these five parts, operators can define their business archi-
tecture according to the ever-changing business model, and create a digital BSS capable
of efficient, agile and automatic operation & maintenance like building blocks.
Combined with the domain-based organization form of operators, the “customer-centric”

operation mode is abstracted for the future, and the core part of ODA, i.e. eTOM business
architecture (as shown in Figure 3-2) is constructed, which emphasizes the domain-
based business process and divides the overall process into two parts from the perspec-
tive of enterprise management: strategic planning and operation.
27
Strategy, infrastructure and product Operation
Strategy and Infrastructure life cycle Product life cycle Operation support and Billing and revenue
Business opening Business guarantee
agreement management management preparation management
Market strategy and tactics Market research Sales development M arketing support and preparation Sales management M arketing perform ance m anagem ent Bill and invoice management
Bill payment and accounts
Market Sales strategy and planning Loyalty program management Contact/m anagem ent of potential users Sales performance management
receivable management
/ Marketing Sales forecasting Marketing communications management
Processing of bill inquiry
Market brand management Marketing activity management
Billing event management
Customer experience strategy Customer support and Order processing Customer problem handling Recharge management
and planning preparation
Customer Qos/SLA management Balance management
Customer Customer experience
management User management
Customer interaction management
客户信息管理
Product & commodity capability Product specification /commodity

Product and commodity set planning Product support and preparation Product configuration management Product performance management
delivery development and exit
Product Product capability management Product life cycle management Product & commodity ordering
management
Service strategy and planning Service capability delivery Service development and exit Service management/operation Service configuration and Service problem handling Service guidance and
Service support and preparation activation
Service quality management
deployment
Resource strategy and planning Resource capability delivery Resource development and exit Resource management Resources opening Resource problem handling Resource allocation and
/operation support and reporting
Resource preparation Resource performance management
Employee management Resource data collection and distribution
Partner’s support and

Cooperation strategy and Cooperative bidding Deliverables development preparation
Processingof partner’s order Handling of partner’s problem Processing of partner’s order
planning management and exit Partner privacy management Partner performance
management
Partner Partner training management
Partner event management Partner interaction management
Cooperation agreement management Promotion and withdrawal management of cooperative relationship
Enterprise Strategy and Finance and asset Knowledge and Stakeholder and external Enterprise risk Enterprise process Human resource General process
企业 relationship management
management enterprise planning management research management management management management management
Figure 3-2 eTOM Model of TM Forum
Although the information system architecture under the ODA system provides a refer-
ence for BSS implementation in the communication industry, the ODA only presents the
logical framework of the key function grouping L0 of BSS. It also identifies and captures
five decoupled functional modules related to the work done by the organization, and
connects and integrates them through the Open API (as shown in Figure 3-3). For the
L0-L1 expansion, the business process in light of the eTom business model needs to be
further refined.
Figure 3-3 ODA Functional Architecture of TM Forum
In the future, the 6G BSS system can further evolve on the ODA functional architecture,
and introduce corresponding capabilities in combination with the development of the
Internet to build a more open and flexible digital business support capability from the
28
bottom up, thus establishing an operator-centered ecosystem to accelerate the develop-

ment of the digital economy. This system provides the following prospects for the busi-
ness development of communication operators in the 6G era:
 Build a digital infrastructure featuring computing and network convergence

based on network resources, thus developing hierarchical services and products
from the bottom up and enable operators to expand their digital capabilities of
external empowerment.
 Remodel the whole process in a customer-centric approach, and attach

importance to customer service experience and efficiency evaluation.
 Process marketing capability support, supporting the landing of diversified

business models.
 Promote the collaborative communication of B domain, O domain and M

domain, and build an efficient, agile and open digital BSS.
3.2.2 Business Support Reference from Internet Industry

Metcalfe, the father of computer network, once pointed out, “The value of a network is
the square of the number of nodes in the network and is proportional to the square of the
number of connected users of the system”. The Internet demonstrates the power-increas-
ing relationship between network scale and network value, and based on the connection
of people, greatly magnifies the total ecological value through open cooperation. Refer-
ence [17] focuses on typical Internet business in the Web 2.0 era, and gives 4C business
model classification method (Connection, Content, Context, Commercial) from the top,
representing social network, content service, information retrieval and e-commerce busi-
ness respectively. In the era of Web2.0, focusing on the core service value, enterprises
gather data via platforms, and try to realize traffic monetization through advertisements,
contents, commissions and other ways. In the process of supporting consumers’ business,
the support systems of Internet companies constantly polish their technical capabilities,
forming a cloud-native IT system and DT system. In addition, they also build a middle
platform business support system for developers, which not only effectively supports
their own SaaS development, but also greatly empowers the corresponding cloud com-
puting business based on IaaS and PaaS.
29
As a result of Web2.0’s centralized nature, the data from all aspects is collected by a few
dominant players due to mergers and restructuring within the internet industry. This
brings huge profits for the industry giants, but meanwhile has created social injustice
and insecurity. Then, Web3.0, based on blockchain, DAPP, semantic web and other tech-
nologies came into being, with the prospect of breaking the monopoly mechanism built
on the platform in the Web2.0 era, and a large number of bottom-up innovations are
quietly taking place. In this process, the research on business model is also in full swing.
[27,28,29,30]
At present, the industry generally adopts bottom-up induction to list various
business models that have been implemented (such as charging according to License and
[31]
blockchain service). On this basis, reference summarizes the business model as
shown in Figure 3-4. Its core idea is to promote multi-party cooperation and jointly cre-
ate ecological prosperity around the core value model of key roles, based on consistent
blockchain model, ecological expansion model and incentive distribution rules. In es-
sence, Web3.0 is to build a trusted digital society by imposing a wide range of constraint
rules on a low-trust network through technology. From the perspective of value creation
and value flow, Web3.0 inherits and continues the successful paradigm in Web2.0. With
the implementation of production modes such as DAO, more innovations can be ex-
pected in the future. The related digital capabilities supporting Web3.0 businesses are
divided into technologies of the basic layer, platform layer and application layer. The
basic layer technology consists of the convergence technology of blockchain, including
distributed ledger, consensus algorithm, cryptography technology, smart contract, dis-
tributed storage, cross-chain, etc. The platform layer technology includes AI, big data,
extended reality (XR), cloud computing, rendering, 3D modeling and so on. Application
layer technologies include a wider variety and offer more possibilities, suggesting huge
potential for the integration and development of various technologies. Therefore, practi-
tioners of Web3.0 are also providing related services and improving the corresponding
BSS from the bottom up around decentralized enabling technology.
30
Figure 3-4 Business Model for Web3.0
In terms of connection enablement, the communication technology has built a more ste-
reoscopic and prosperous cyberspace than the Internet. How to maximize the ecological
value of operators based on the powerful cyberspace? 6G Flagship and other organiza-
tions [16,18,19] once introduced the 4C business model framework [17], which was applied
to Web2.0, into the communication field (as shown in Figure 3-5). The purpose of this
was to better cope with the increasingly diversified products and services of communi-
cation operators. From the business development of the Internet industry, the following
points are worthy of reference for the communication industry:
 Consensus on core values regarding to its own superior resources.
 Keep an open mind in cooperation to release more business potential.
 Change the business support from internal service to customer service, and
focus on customer experience.
31
Figure 3-5 4C Model of Communication Business
In practice, operators have also expanded their flow management business with the help
of the mobile Internet Connection capability provided by 4G, and began to gradually
introduce the cloud native and big data of the Internet to improve the agility and intelli-
gence of consumer business support, and then further expanded the industrial-level dig-
ital business through the cloudified middle platform service under the capability support
of the 5G Internet of Everything. For the future 6G era, operators should not only con-
sider the continuous influence of Web2.0, but pay attention to the new business model
and business innovation brought by Web3.0. Their digital BSS shall be enhanced in the
following aspects:
 With the innovation of the underlying technology from 4G, 5G to 6G, the
standard connection value of communication operators is improving, including
horizontal (perception capability, computing power integration capability, ICT
convergence, etc.) and vertical (extreme improvement of network
communication performance indicators) value expansion. As a result, the
underlying core value construction is no longer limited to the network, but
extends to the dimensions of computing power, perception terminal and storage
power.
 As a general purpose technology, connection has increasingly prominent value

in enablement. Operators can use this core competence to integrate more
32
technologies besides data, including intelligent collaboration, service

connection, tool integration, etc., and build a developer ecosystem to enhance
their business innovation capabilities.
 Under the decentralized business model, it is particularly important to establish

a digital ecosystem with operators as the core. Establishing a digital support
system with incentive mechanism and efficient operation for business
innovation will drive operators to continuously provide high-level value-added
services and stimulate business innovation.
3.2.3 BSS Evolution and Planning of Operators

With the advent of the digital economy era, the communication industry has been making
proactive efforts since the 4G era to cope with the rapid changes in the market and tech-
nology. In the current 5G era, with the saturation of the personal communication market,
the enterprise market has indisputably become the growth pole of operators in the future.
However, enterprise services such as SD-WAN, enterprise security and network slice
need to be built on the combination of virtualization and various network functions
(RAN, core, transmission and cloud), and are not provided by isolated network domains.
In addition, the needs of different enterprise customers and the ways of business coop-
eration are quite different. Therefore, digital service providers must optimize their oper-
ations to ensure the improvement of delivery cost and delivery efficiency.
To respond to these changes, the global mainstream BSS manufacturers and even oper-
ators have put forward a series of corresponding technologies, products and solution
systems. For example, the established communication BSS manufacturers Amdocs, Er-
icsson, Huawei, AsiaInfo, the international operator Verizon, and the three major domes-
tic operators in China have provided corresponding solutions for the common needs of
global operators.
The digital brand experience support system provided by Amdocs is a digital customer
management, commercial and monetization solution based on the existing BSS, which
is specially designed for the digital brand needs of service providers, who need to pro-
vide digital experience for their customers while maintaining agility, innovation and
rapid launching capability. This solution helps operators to streamline the closed loop of
their business support by pre-building business and technical processes across the full
life cycle, including customer care, business, ordering and monetization. In addition,
33
Amdocs provides cloud migration service on BSS, which is planned and executed by
Amdocs in cooperation with AWS, involving a large number of BSS data, for the purpose
of providing better personalized user experience, improving self-service adoption rate
and greater flexibility.
In response to the transformation of communication service providers to digital service

providers, Ericsson has built a new customer-centric BSS for operators. By redefining
the multiple layers of digital customer enabler, digital business enabler, service manage-
ment and network & cloud infrastructure from top down, a multi-level value monetiza-
tion system is established for operators to unleash business vitality.
AsiaInfo has proposed the concept of “global virtualization, global intelligentization and
global perception” (“three global domains” for short) of 5G to enhance the technical
evolution of 5G private network, 5G network intelligentization, computing network and
customer experience management (CEM) towards 3GPP 5G Advanced. They focus on
three major technology modules (cloud network, IT and digital intelligence) and the
technical evolution of Top X core technology of three major middle platform systems
(technical middle platform, data middle platform and AI middle platform), as well as the
continuous evolution of BO convergence technology.
In response to the global wave of digital economy, international operators have devel-
oped a variety of technologies and solutions for enterprise support systems, such as dig-
ital transformation solutions, cloud solutions, mobile solutions, and IoT solutions.
Beyond the enterprise market, the metaverse business based on Web3.0 may reshape all
aspects of personal life. The first obvious business opportunity brought about by the
metaverse for communication operators is the upgrade of connectivity. With the support
of the 6G network, the metaverse business will move from those such as simulation ac-
tivities, customer seminars, webinars, and digital twins for corporate operation to higher-
level metaverse application scenarios such as immersive XR, holographic imaging, and
sensory interconnection. In the face of the changes brought about by the metaverse, some
operators do not hope to be simple connection providers. For example, Deutsche Tele-
kom recently cooperated with Telecom to bring the Korean operator’s ifland Metaverse
platform to Europe, allowing users to create virtual images and establish virtual confer-
ences in the “New World”. For operators, the metaverse will be an opportunity to estab-
lish partnerships and do more than connection service providers. Operators may have
34
the opportunity to provide a “business platform” to use the combination of product cat-
alog, bills, charging, partner management, care, sales and marketing to power the inno-
vative businesses based on the metaverse. Metaverse has opened up a variety of new
methods for the business innovation of operators. In the metaverse based on Web3.0, the
potential for new business model, personalized contextual advertising & services, and
value-added sales of digital content are enormous, but this also highlights the need for
the existing BSS to provide a high degree of openness, adaptability and flexibility.
In order to better support the development of metaverse business under Web3.0, a TM

Forum catalyst project jointly completed by multinational operators proposed to intro-
duce a customer digital avatar driven by AI with decentralized digital identity and data
ownership into the existing BSS, in order to provide new digital contact points for cus-
tomer care and service agents, thereby comprehensively improving customer experience,
employee experience, use experience and multiple experiences, and then strengthening
the customer-centric sustainable business development model. Chinese operators have
also defined a ubiquitous computing-aware network resource layer, a game-based com-
puting power engine layer, an immersive social experience layer, and a hybrid reality
business layer in the metaverse BSS from the bottom up. It can be seen from this plan
that operators have borrowed ideas from the Internet companies to support the co-con-
struction of infrastructure, the creation of development ecology, and the upgrade of user
experience in a more inclusive manner. From operators’ current business exploration of
the metaverse, it is observed that communication operators are accelerating their trans-
formation into digital service providers, so creating a new BSS for the 6G digital inno-
vation has also become part of their agenda.
3.3 6G Domain-based Business Support Model for

Digital Innovation
From the open digital architecture developed by the industry standard organization TM
Forum, to the theoretical research on communication service models under Web2.0 in
the industry, as well as the new topics brought by Web3.0 and 6G for operator business,
and even the transformation practices of operators themselves to digital service providers,
a possible evolutionary path for BSS capabilities in the 6G context can be summarized.
35
First, the 6G network will greatly enhance the connection advantages of operators in
infrastructure resources, enabling operators to adjust, integrate and enhance computing
power with the support of the network, build blockchain based network infrastructure
for Web3.0, and widely connect infrastructure providers through the 6G network so as
to integrate network-wide resources. Second, operators can open up the CT capabilities
of 6G network like Internet companies, introduce IT, DT, and OT capabilities, and create
assembled full stack digital technology services for production developers, in order to
support the innovative development of digital business. Third, based on ubiquitous com-
puting-aware network and full stack digital technology capabilities, operators can en-
hance their own digital business innovation, and also work with partners to promote
industrial digital business innovation. Finally, operators need to establish corresponding
ecological cooperation at different levels such as resource supply, production & devel-
opment and business innovation based on their core capabilities, in order to ensure the
sustainable development of the 6G business. A customer-centric total experience and
integrated operation and empowerment will run through the above domains, and the cor-
responding 6G BSS will further improve the operation efficiency of operators in re-
sponse to the above needs and upgrade the business support ability for external empow-
erment.
To improve the digital operation efficiency of operators themselves, 6G BSS needs to be

continuously upgraded in the following two aspects:
 Transition from internal-user-supported to customer-centric: Technologies

such as intention recognition, new SLA evaluation system, data fabric, digital
twin and ultra-automation should be introduced to build unified digital identities
around customers and optimize customers’ service experience.
 Whole-process collaboration, enabling integrated and automated

operation: New technologies such as digital intelligence, cloud native and
Devops for operator-oriented business operations and support systems should
be introduced to continuously improve the operation efficiency and scalability
of core business.
To improve the digital empowerment efficiency for operators, 6G BSS needs to fully
support ecological cooperation in a more open form:
36
 Accurate positioning of foundation core values: In the intergenerational

replacement of communication capabilities, the carrier of communication core
values has completed continuous upgrades from voice, text, traffic, video, and
future holographic communication. With the introduction of technologies such
as computing and network convergence and Web3.0 into 6G, future-oriented
computing-aware network resources and decentralized Web3.0 support
capabilities have also become new value carriers.
 Technology convergence drives product innovation: Due to the convergence

and development of IT and CT technologies, operators can not only provide
their powerful communication technology services, but also introduce
technologies such as cloud computing, big data, AI and industrial
interconnection operations to offer developers digital service production
capabilities, with the services required by decentralized applications taken into
account to guarantee user data ownership under Web3.0.
 Value creation drives business innovation: The general purpose technologies

and underlying resources provided based on the digital production layer can
effectively promote the operators and ecological partners to complete business
innovation. In addition to trusted transactions of resources such as computing
network and data, developers may obtain digital tools, end users can get
corresponding digital products, and users are empowered to realize value
through their own digital assets in the era of Web3.0.
 Connecting participants to promote ecological cooperation: All business

innovations shall be based on effective business contracts of all participants.
The ability to support innovation of different business modes and trusted
transaction will be the key to the future ecological construction of operators. In
particular, those of interest should pay attention to the effective utilization of
the decentralized autonomous organizations emerging under Web3.0 to
establish the ecosystem advocated by operators.
In order to implement the above design elements and adhere to the principles of decou-
pling and collaboration, this White Paper proposes a domain-based business focus and
collaborative cooperation model for digital innovation (see Table 3-1 below) to support
the digital innovation of 6G business.
37
Table 3-1 Operator Business Model for the 6G Era
Digital innovation Design points of BSS Domain-based decoupling
Transition from internal-user- supported to customer-centric Experience

Improvement of digital
operation efficiency Whole-process collaboration, enabling integration and automated
Operation
operation
Accurate positioning of basic core values Resource
Technology convergence drives product innovation Production

Digital empowerment
efficiency
Value mining drives business innovation Business
Connecting participants to promote ecological cooperation Ecosystem
 Experience domain: This domain will focus on customers, identify

breakpoints and optimizable points in business processes, and improve
customer experience, employee experience, user experience, and multiple
experiences. It will focus on total experience optimization of service processes.
 Operation domain: This domain will break down the institutional and
technical barriers of various domains of operators, and achieve comprehensive
automation of operation processes for safety production requirements and
business use processes. It will focus on automation and intelligentization of
operations across all domains.
 Resource domain: This domain will determine the core basic resources and
corresponding resource management methods of operators, with a special focus
on the overall resource utilization rate, as well as lean resource integration and
operational management of resources.
 Production domain: This domain will integrate various digital production

capabilities and produce corresponding digital tools or processing lines. It will
focus on the production and R&D of digital products, and provide ecological
support for creators.
 Business domain: This domain will determine the business process and
operation mode, formulate corresponding product plans, and provide core
functions to ensure the best user experience. It will focus on deliverable services
38
and products, and ensure the full life cycle management of products and
commodities.
 Ecosystem domain: This domain will build a communication channel for

ecological partners with operators as the center and provide real-time incentives
and scenario empowerment through capital operation and other methods to
quickly acquire the resources and capabilities required for cooperation. It will
focus on ecological business model design, revenue generation, and formulation
of commercial rule.
39
IV. Overall Vision of 6G BSS

This White Paper holds that 6G, as a general purpose technology, will strengthen the
vision of value spillovers, and operators also hope to become the core of the digital ser-
vice ecosystem with the help of 6G capabilities, so as to secure an advantageous position
in the Internet digital upgrading process. So, 6G BSS shall be able to construct an eco-
logical system in a fully open form, and promote the self-creation and self-evolution of
the overall digital economic value of the society. The accelerating transformation of dig-
ital business and the upgrading of capabilities driven by 6G technology from the bottom
to top require operators to focus on different layers and collaborate on digital innovation.
This 6G domain-based business support model will continuously strengthen and improve
the digital operational efficiency and digital empowerment efficiency of operators. It
also enables the development of BSS with DOICT as its technological basis, thereby
realizing a series of visions, such as ecological valuation, business diversification, pro-
duction flexibility, resource sharing, scenario-based experience, operation automation
and native safety and security, and enabling the 6G digital business innovation. These
are shown in Figure 4-1:
Experience
(scenario-based)
Enable
Ecosystem (value-based) Operation
the (super-
6G automated,
digital native
Business (diverse)
safety and
business security)
innovation
Production (flexible)
Resource (sharing)
Figure 4-1 BSS Vision for 6G
 Scenario-based experience: In the experience domain, diverse experiences are

provided based on different business scenarios to meet the needs of total
40
experience of intelligent interaction and virtual-real interaction required by

different role objects during enterprise business activities, which are mainly
reflected in:
 The objects satisfied by the digital experience include employees, corporate

customers, partners, suppliers, consumers, etc., focusing on the system
platform and customers’ zero-touch collaboration and business intention
perception capabilities.
 In terms of digital experience interaction mode, it has expanded from

traditional human-computer interaction, PC terminal and mobile terminal
to total experience modes such as brain-computer interaction, virtual-real
interaction between intelligent agent and twin aggregate, metaverse and
super APP.
 Support customer digital avatars, digital virtual humans, and achieve an

omni-channel, full-process business intent driven experience. Being able to
convert experience orders such as “I want machine-checked connections”
into seamless on-demand services for product management provided and
charged by a digital innovation platform.
 Operation automation: In the operation domain, focusing on the automation,

process mining, and security of BSS business processes can be expanded to
external enabling meeting the future business ecology monetization, to achieve
the integration of B2B2X business ecology. Through the E2E business process
automation, operations of resource, production, business and ecology are
connected in series to improve digital operation and empowerment efficiencies,
which is supported by security technologies such as platform engineering,
blockchain and zero trust, embedded in the E2E business processes of enterprise
production, and coordinated with intelligent process mining and optimization
to ensure the credibility of the entire process.
 Resource sharing: In the resource domain, network resources (connection,

perception, positioning, etc.), computing power resources (CPU, GPU, etc.),
storage resources (memory), and related IT high-level computing power
resources can realize sharing, reuse, elastic and efficient resource management
41
[32,33]
through cloud-edge-terminal distributed and container technologies,
which are mainly reflected in:
 The integration of physical resources at different regions and levels.
 The integration of cloud-edge-terminal three-dimensional ubiquitous

logical resources.
 The integration of heterogeneous resources brought by different computing

hardware and diverse chip architectures.
 Production flexibility: In the production domain, new technologies such as

data fabric and digital twins are introduced as needed with the support of a cloud
native component-based framework. The technical architecture is easy to
expand, technical elements are easy to integrate, and technical capabilities are
easy to invoke. Zero code/no code and visual drag-and-drop tools are provided
for developers to simplify the application complexity of these technologies [32].
Through production domain integration, various types of digital production
capabilities are integrated and corresponding digital tools or processing lines
are produced, focusing on the integration of digital product production and
R&D, and providing ecological support for creators to enable rapid
transformation and collaborative production of multiple technologies, processes,
forms, and units.
 Business diversification: In the business domain, integrated communications

and sensing, air-space-ground integration, proliferation of intelligence, and
high-precision perception and positioning further diversify the business and
scenarios. In terms of diversified capacity building, the key points are:
 Extracting common features of business capabilities to form a digital

[34]
business virtual network element and service unit orchestrator ;
integrating and solidifying through business service descriptor (BSD), and
building standard business processes to achieve visualization, agile
development and innovation, flexible deployment and scenario operations
of business.
42
 Building a new business service evaluation system that integrates QoE

(Quality of Experience) and QoS (Quality of Service), which can be used
as a model definition for new communication services to analyze and
measure visual/tactile sensing accuracy, experience, etc.
 Ecological valuation: In the ecosystem domain, B2B2X represents a

significant breakthrough in the past model for operators. The “chain connection”
model based on simple upstream and downstream cooperation of “service
provision, service procurement”, has evolved into a “network interconnection”
[32]
model of multiple types of cooperation and collaboration . As operators of
value network, operators have also shifted from “solution promoters” to
“solution creators”, releasing the new paradigm of ecological cooperation and
systematic capabilities such as customer security and privacy, data flow, trusted
transactions, decentralized autonomous organizations. BSS shall be
strengthened to build a benign ecosystem, and provide protection for the
sustainable and healthy development of digital systems.
43
V. 6G BSS Potential Technologies

Generally, BSS presents an epochal business development trend in the 6G era, which re-
quires the support of a series of future-oriented IT technologies. Based on the advance-
ment timeline of 6G and the evolution characteristics of BSS, and for the reference of
readers, some technologies that may serve as the future IT support for BSS have been
identified and examined. These technologies, yet to be developed, are expected to be avail-
able around 2030. Figure 5-1 summarizes the recommended potential key IT technologies
in the planning of 6G BSS.
Figure 5-1 Potential Key Technologies of 6G BSS
6G BSS will be a system for application ecosystem and value chain, so the sharing of
resources among applications, scenarios, and partner support systems is very important.
Based on this requirement, a sustainable cloud computing model needs to be introduced
in the resource domain to support a cloud computing environment that is not entirely
owned and controlled by operators. In addition, due to the concept of 6G sensing as a
network and its E2E capabilities for vertical industries, cloud-edge-terminal integration
technology is naturally introduced to share cloud-edge-terminal computing resources. It
is also necessary to introduce distributed scheduling technology to achieve unified re-
source scheduling.
Due to the complexity and importance of the system in the 6G era (considering its in-
volvement in core production and personal health), it will be necessary for individuals to
exert their personal initiative to achieve democratization of manufacturing. Based on such
premise, intelligent digital twins and data fabric technology may be introduced into the
44
production domain. Intelligent digital twin technology can provide comprehensive per-
ception and prediction capabilities for system managers, thereby essentially improving the
controllability of the system; furthermore, data fabric technology can provide data inte-
gration capabilities of low cost and high timeliness, which will be a good foundation for
monetization of operational data.
At the level of business domain, considering the requirements of the Internet of Every-
thing and interactive perception in the 6G era, supporting business diversification will
become the development trend of BSS. Therefore, the ability of AI will become the key
for operators to stand out from the competition. To achieve business diversification, it is
necessary to introduce self-adaptive AI technology to enable operators to avoid long train-
ing and parameter adjustment processes when using AI technology. It is particularly cru-
cial to allow AI technology to adapt to the business. Due to the complexity of business
and the diversity of participants, it will be very important to introduce business hypervis-
ualization technology to respond to the market and application ecology in time. Similarly,
in order to reconcile the need for system participants to use data in fierce competition and
the growing awareness of various stakeholders to data privacy, the introduction of privacy
computing technology will be inevitable.
Experience in the 6G era requires a more natural human-computer interaction. Therefore,

introducing an interactive mode based on intelligent customer avatars in the business do-
main will enable operators to establish a more humanized and efficient interactive con-
nection with customers, thereby achieving the ideal of collaborative human-computer in-
teraction. This connection also needs to overcome the inherent vagueness and ambiguity
problems of natural interaction models, so intention perception technology needs to be
introduced synchronously to truly capture the customer’s intentions and provide timely
and appropriate responses.
Due to the characteristics of 6G BSS such as system participants, application ecological

environment, Internet of Everything and system scale, the automation and security of op-
erations will be crucial. Therefore, the system needs to establish a stronger security and
operation system, in which the zero trust security control and native safety and security
based on blockchain trusted identity authentication shall be introduced to establish a se-
curity system, and the introduction of super automation, platform engineering and digital
immune system shall be an issue worthy of serious consideration so as to improve the
overall operation efficiency of the system.
45
5.1 6G BSS Technical Framework

The 6G BSS technical framework adopts a cloud, edge and terminal architecture, as shown
in Figure 5-2. Each part is designed based on a layered architecture and can simplify com-
plex issues. Based on the principle of single responsibility, each layer of codes performs
their respective duties. Based on the design methodology of “high cohesion, low cou-
pling”, the interaction between relevant layers is achieved, thereby improving the main-
tainability and expandability of the platform.
Platform engineering
Intelligent customer avatar
Presentation Intent identification

layer
High-
perfor
manc Trust Self-
Cloud e ed adap
Cloud side Service cloudi identit tive
layer Sustai Data Cloud Sup Intell Proliferation
native fied y AI
nable fabric -edge- er igent of intelligence
platform archit cloud and authe
termi DIM auto digit
ecture nticati
comp privacy nal mati al
on
uting comput integr on twin
based
model ing ation
Storage on
layer block
chain
Edge
Terminal
Figure 5-2 6G BSS Technical Framework
The entire technical framework follows the platform engineering philosophy in order to
optimize the developer experience and accelerate the product team’s speed for creating
value for customers. For different business domains, BSS, as an industry cloud platform,
can provide industry modular capabilities to support industry application scenarios by
combining SaaS, platform as a service (PaaS), and infrastructure as a service (IaaS). The
platform truly realized “continuous and ubiquitous learning and perpetual updates” across
different business ecosystems, offering AI services and applications to every end user and
allowing real-time and reliable AI intelligence to become a faithful partner for every indi-
vidual, family and industry, thus achieving proliferation of intelligence.
When any interested party takes any type of action, BSS will generate “observable data”
containing digital features, such as logs, traces, API calls, dwell times, downloads and file
transfers and feed back all observable characteristic data in a highly coordinated and inte-
grated manner to create a decision-making cycle, thereby improving the effectiveness of
46
organizational decision-making and the application observability capabilities. The digital

immune system will create an excellent user experience (UX) while reducing system faults.
The platform using the digital immune system can reduce system downtime by up to 80%,
and the reduced losses will directly translate into higher revenue. The cloud-edge-terminal
integrated BSS provides unified application and operation management for business sce-
narios, and will become a fundamental platform for digital transformation in various in-
dustries, enabling in-depth empowerment for digital transformation and intelligent up-
grading in various industries and more accurate and efficient screening, convergence,
analysis, and prediction of massive situational perception information. The intelligent dig-
ital twin connects the data of cloud, edge and terminal layers of the platform, and pro-
cesses and analyzes the data. It has the capabilities of holographic mapping, simulation
deduction, analysis & prediction and real-time interaction. The full-stack technology sys-
tem can quickly adapt to various industries, meet the cost reduction and efficiency increase
requirements of business digital transformation, and provide strong support for establish-
ing industrial upgrade with data as the core driving factor.
BSS can adopt a zero trust security model to ensure security. In essence, zero trust is to
authenticate all assets such as personnel, devices and servers and build an identity centric
trust evaluation and dynamic access control system to ensure security protection for busi-
ness data access. That is, through the zero trust business access model, it ensures that the
correct people, use the correct terminals, use the correct authority to access the correct
business at any network location and obtain the correct data. A decentralized trusted iden-
tity authentication solution based on blockchain can be applied to identity authentication
and manage keys in decentralized related business scenarios.
BSS can also introduce low code platforms, which can enhance communication efficiency
between business teams and IT departments by reducing losses caused by human commu-
nication. For developers, low code platforms eliminate the tedious and repetitive coding
work in the development process, and can effectively reduce labor costs and improve the
development efficiency. In terms of low code, the super APP solution adopted provides a
very convenient service. With strong third-party integration capabilities, it offers multiple
services by a single application and can save resource and realize data sharing. On this
basis, a super automated business technology platform is constructed, which is composed
of a business automation orchestration module, a data governance module, a data flow
orchestration modeling module, an AI algorithm module, a visualization module and a
47
SmartAgent module. For scenarios where process standardization rates can be applied, the
platform can comprehensively solve manual errors in business processes and improves
enterprise process efficiency.
5.2 6G BSS Key Technologies

5.2.1 Total Experience Upgrade Based on Intelligent
Customer Avatars
Undoubtedly, total experience [35] will become one of the main options for communication
operators to move towards Web3.0 metaverse operation based on 6G capabilities. It is a
business strategy implemented for all enterprise related personnel (including customers,
employees, users, partners, etc.), with the goal of creating a more comprehensive and more
pertinent brand perception and experience for everyone. Total experience includes four
categories: customer experience, i.e. to measure customers’ perception and experience of
the brand through their interaction and behavior with the enterprise; employee experience,
i.e. to measure employees’ perception and experience of the brand through their interac-
tion and behavior with customers; user experience, i.e. to measure the users’ experience
of this application through their behavior and feelings during the use of digital products;
multiple experiences, i.e. to measure the experience of different interaction modes brought
to users by the same application across devices and contacts.
With the upgrading of computing and network infrastructure brought by the 6G network,
[36]
the customer avatar based on Web3.0 is expected to significantly enhance the total
experience of the metaverse as a killer application: customer avatar, as customer’s digital
avatar, uses the key of an Internet token to smoothly navigate different applications, while
enterprise employees can also verify the identity of the same user, both parties have es-
tablished a mutual trust relationship based on trusted technology; customer avatar pro-
vides customers with personal data management throughout their full life cycle, including
authorizing third parties to use data and personal data transaction. Enterprises obtain legal
and compliant data utilization rights through smart contracts, and employees do not need
to worry about compromising their personal privacy; customer avatar provides an open
interface that allows customers to purchase and access intelligent services provided by
enterprises, enabling them to act as intelligent assistants to help customers effectively
manage the interaction behavior and time of the metaverse. In terms of user experience
48
and multiple experiences, regardless of the device or terminal, customers can interact with
their main or even unique contact customer avatar in a natural way. For example, a virtual
reality helmet can be operated through voice intonation, eye movement, facial expressions
and even body language, while wearable watches, allows user to interact through voice,
or text, in an environment that requires silence. In short, all parties in the metaverse com-
municate effectively by natural language interaction at different contacts through cus-
tomer avatar. Customer avatar can always be online, react in real time, and continuously
optimize itself.
In the metaverse era supported by 6G network, customer journey will become the most
fundamental and core element, and effective management and sharing of customer jour-
ney will become the cornerstone of continuous optimization and total experience [37]. The
characteristics of current customer journey data aggregation are that data needs to be in-
jected in a real-time, agile and continuous manner, and data from different systems and
sources need to be matched based on the unified identity of the customer. In the customer
journey analysis phase, the focus is on connecting customer behavior trajectory data from
different channels, contacts and interfaces based on time series to reveal the customer’s
true history trajectory, replacing the original scattered analysis of contacts with linear tra-
jectory path analysis. In terms of the application of customer journey strategy, it can sim-
ultaneously bring benefits in the three dimensions of enterprise value beliefs (product
leadership, customer intimacy and operational excellence), focusing on four aspects: op-
eration efficiency enhancement, experience improvement, revenue growth and customer
loyalty. With customer avatar as an innovative interface for user experience, customer-
centric, immersive and wrap-around integrated contact services will become the main-
stream in the future. The granularity of contact, communication and interaction between
enterprises and customers will become increasingly detailed, covering a wider customer
journey and a more extensive multi-dimensional service space.
5.2.2 Upgrade of Interaction Methods Based on Intention

Perception
The technological development in the 6G era will be inclined to interact with systems with
natural ways in order to improve efficiency and lower the threshold for system use, and
enable the intelligent agents to obtain more training data for faster iterations. Therefore,
49
the interaction method based on natural input/output modes such as voice, coupled with
intention perception[38], will definitely promote the upgrade of interaction method.
Intention perception-based interaction is an intelligent interaction method, by which the

user’s language, semantics, background and other information can be analyzed to under-
stand the user’s intentions and provide corresponding help or answers. This interaction
method can make the user experience more natural, and help users obtain the required
information more quickly and accurately. Compared to traditional interaction methods,
intention perception-based interaction can provide more personalized and flexible services
and more efficient solution to problems. Implementing this interaction method requires
strong natural language processing capabilities and a rich knowledge base; meanwhile,
issues such as uncertainty, ambiguity and vagueness, as well as how to improve the accu-
racy and credibility of the system also need to be addressed. Intention perception-based
interaction can be combined with voice as an input/output method. This allows users to
interact with the system by speaking without using text or other input methods.
Using BSS based on intention perception, voice input and other technologies can achieve
rapid upgrades in interaction methods, greatly reduce the threshold for system use, and
enable end customers, temporary employees and others to use the system efficiently and
accurately. In addition, it can also improve production efficiency, enable users to obtain
more accurate business operation data faster, and make timely and accurate responses to
the market.
5.2.3 Visual Operation Based on Intelligent Digital Twins

Due to the fully open architecture of BSS in the 6G era and the unprecedented enhance-
ment of communication network capabilities, a large number of advanced technologies
will be integrated into the system, and BSS will penetrate all aspects of the cloud, network,
edge and terminal, all of which lead to the unprecedented complexity of BSS. At the same
time, 6G has carved out many new frontiers for the development of telecommunication
business, and has also made business development and market competition more complex
and difficult to control. Visual operations based on intelligent digital twin can reflect the
architecture and operational status of the system, as well as changes in business in an
intuitive and real-time manner, and enable a certain degree of prediction and simulation
for business.
50
[39]
The intelligent digital twin technology allows entities or processes in the physical
world to be digitally mirrored and replicated in the digital world. Intelligent interactions
between people and people, people and objects, objects and objects may be achieved
through mappings in the digital world. By mining rich historical and real-time data in the
digital world and generating perceptual and cognitive intelligence through advanced al-
gorithmic models, the digital world can simulate, verify, predict and control physical en-
tities or processes, thereby obtaining the optimal state of the physical world. Intelligent
digital twin technology can provide many possibilities in various fields: in the medical
field, medical systems can duplicate the patient information via digital twin to make dis-
ease diagnosis and determine the best treatment plan; in the industrial field, optimizing
product design through the digital domain can reduce costs and improve efficiency; in the
agricultural field, using digital twin to simulate and deduce agricultural production pro-
cesses can predict adverse factors and improve agricultural production and land use effi-
ciency; in the field of network operation & maintenance, through closed-loop interaction
between digital and physical domains, cognitive intelligence, automated operation &
maintenance and other operations, the network can quickly adapt to complex and dynamic
environments, thus achieving “autonomous” throughout the full life cycle of operation &
maintenance, such as planning, construction, monitoring, optimization and self-healing.
The application of intelligent digital twin technology in BSS can include two aspects:
system twin and business twin. In terms of system twin, BSS can use twin technology to
construct their own operation & maintenance system: for example, twin technology can
be used to reflect the system architecture and system operation status in real time, thereby
detecting system operation problems easily; the twin can also be used to simulate some
extreme scenarios (such as large-scale sports events held in cities), so as to predict poten-
tial problems for the system operation under such scenarios and explore better system
resource configuration for higher operation performance or reduced system costs. In terms
of business twin, digital twin technology may be used to enhance the observability of
applications and provide real-time analysis and intuitive presentation capacities for actual
data generated during enterprise operations. Digital twin technology may also be used to
simulate business decision results, predict the effects of marketing plans, etc., facilitating
proactive and informed decision-making of operators in a relatively short period of time.
As a result, operators can further meet the customer-centric digital transformation needs
and enhance the competitiveness of enterprises.
51
5.2.4 Automated Operations Based on Self-adaptive AI

Due to the unprecedented business and technical diversity in the 6G era, BSS has become
more complex, and the requirements for availability and reliability are more stringent. In
this context, maintenance of BSS only with manpower would be unfeasible, thus making
AI technology indispensable for BSS operations. However, the current AI technology still
requires a large amount of human intervention to achieve feature engineering, parameter
adjustment and even algorithm adjustment based on changes in business scenarios. This
will also restrict the adaptive speed and ability of the system in the 6G era of rapid change.
Therefore, the introduction of self-adaptive AI technology will enable BSS in the 6G era
to have better business adaptability, thereby helping operators gain advantages in compe-
tition.
Self-adaptive AI [40] refers to the ability of an AI system to automatically adjust its param-
eters and behavior based on the current environment and tasks to better complete tasks.
This type of AI system can remain effective in ever-changing environments and continu-
ously improve its performance through learning. In this case, the AI system does not need
human intervention, and can learn and adjust independently to adapt to the new situation.
The self-adaptive AI technology can improve the operation efficiency and performance of
BSS. This technology can automatically monitor the operating status of BSS and automat-
ically adjust parameters based on the system needs and performance. For example, when
a system requires more computing power, the self-adaptive AI technology can automati-
cally expand the computing resources of the system; when the system is operating nor-
mally, the operating parameters of the system can be automatically adjusted to save energy
and improve performance. In addition, the self-adaptive AI technology can also continu-
ously improve the system performance through learning, enabling the system to respond
to ever-changing environments and needs.
5.2.5 Distributed Application Based on Cloud-edge-terminal

Integration
In the 6G era, the support for business will show decentralized characteristics, and the
information collection, computing, decision-making, marketing, and service activity op-
erations of business operations will not only be executed in the center system. Therefore,
BSS will not only be deployed and executed in the cloud, but also on the edge and terminal.
52
Therefore, it will be necessary to utilize cloud-edge-terminal integration technology to

support the operation & maintenance of BSS as a distributed application.
The cloud-edge-terminal integration technology [41] achieves unified perspective manage-

ment and use of cloud-edge-terminal distributed resources by integrating and abstracting
edge nodes and terminal devices with wide distribution, heterogeneous resources, diverse
forms and different protocols. On the basis of resource integration, it is possible to uni-
formly monitor, operate & maintain cloud-edge-terminal distributed resources, perform
unified perspective operation & maintenance, and minimize user operations, thereby
building a full range of capabilities and three-dimensional security capabilities for distrib-
uted data collection, processing, aggregation, analysis, storage and management.
BSS based on cloud-edge-terminal integration technology can provide unified application

and operation management for business scenarios by integrating capabilities such as ubiq-
uitous access, network management, cloud-edge-terminal collaboration, unified schedul-
ing, AI, data platform, component development and ecological openness, shielding differ-
ences in underlying heterogeneous resources. With the support of cloud-edge-terminal in-
tegration for BSS, operators can screen, converge, analyze, predict and respond to massive
information more accurately and efficiently, thereby effectively improving business agil-
ity and responsiveness.
5.2.6 Native Network Security Based on Blockchain Trusted

Identity Authentication
After entering the 6G era, the related BSS will be provided and operated by operators,
while partners and customers may become system providers and operators. The network
environment is not limited to the operator’s intranet, and the operating device is not lim-
ited to the operator’s device, which will become inevitable. Therefore, it will be inevitable
to ensure the high security of BSS based on Native Network Security concepts and tech-
[42]
nologies, and the blockchain-based trusted identity authentication technology is the
key to achieving Native Network Security.
In the traditional identity authentication system, the identity information is stored and
managed by the central server. It is common for authentication servers to experience hard-
ware and software faults and network attacks. In order to thoroughly address the security
threats of identity authentication systems, it is urgent to find a decentralized technical so-
lution that has high data security, effective resistance to network attacks, and can meet the
53
operation needs of authentication systems. A decentralized identity is a new form of iden-

tity and access management (IAM), which is no longer the centralized storage of user
information. Decentralized identity identification stores identity information in distributed
computer systems, such as distributed ledgers or blockchains, and uses distributed ledgers
to preserve identity elements to protect them from tampering and theft. Therefore, even if
your identity information is recorded in electronic format, it will not be changed, stolen
or deleted.
IGC
IGC
Block head
Transaction
Transaction
Transaction
Transaction
Transaction
Transaction
IGC
Figure 5-3 Decentralized Identity Solution Based on Blockchain
After BSS adopts a blockchain-based identity authentication solution (as shown in Figure
5-3), user nodes only need the IGC (Identity Generator Center) to issue identity infor-
mation and generate key information when registering for the first time. Subsequently,
user nodes can automatically update their keys without relying on the IGC, and the key
update process is recorded on the blockchain in the form of transactions. The immutability
of blockchain data ensures the security and credibility of the key update process, thereby
achieving high security of BSS in identity authentication and key management.
5.2.7 Minimalist Development Based on Super Automation

and Platform Engineering
6G BSS faces unprecedented pressure of business operation and upgrade maintenance.
How to cope with these pressures with lower costs and faster response is an important test
54
for BSS, while super automation and platform engineering are the key technologies to
address this pressure.
[43]
Super automation is a business-driven method, which is used by organizations to
quickly identify, review and automate business and IT processes as many as possible. It is
also an integration combining multiple technical capabilities and software tools such as
robotic process automation, process mining and intelligent business process management,
a further extension of concepts such as intelligent process automation and integrated au-
tomation, and an important part of enterprise digital transformation, remodeling and rev-
olution. Business-driven super automation, as a new methodology, achieves collaboration,
reshaping and optimization of business processes across departments and systems in en-
terprises through a lightweight, non-invasive method. The super automation solution
makes it possible to quickly identify, review, automate business and IT processes as much
as possible, and enables users to expand and accelerate the digital process. Super automa-
tion has realized the automatic processing of massive complex businesses and has been
widely used in industries such as finance, manufacturing and telecommunication, effec-
tively promoting the digital transformation of organizations. With this concept, BSS can
be constructed as a super automated business technology platform, which can be applied
in scenarios with process standardization rates to comprehensively solve human errors in
business processes and improve the efficiency of enterprise processes.
Platform engineering technology is a set of mechanisms and architectures for building and
operating a self-service internal developer platform that supports software delivery and
life cycle management (as shown in Figure 5-4). The goal of platform engineering is to
optimize the developer experience and accelerate the product team’s speed for creating
value for customers. The integrated products provided by the platform engineering are
commonly referred to as “internal developer platforms”, covering the operation & mainte-
nance needs throughout the full life cycle of an application. According to Gartner, by 2026,
80% of software engineering organizations will establish platform teams, and 75% of
those will provide self-service developer portals.
55
Figure 5-4 Platform Engineering Technology
Platform engineering achieves a certain level of developer self-service through product

methods, and finds the appropriate abstraction level for various organizations and teams.
Platform teams can combine user research, regular feedback, and best marketing practices
to get to know their developers, create a platform to solve common problems, and gain
internal support from key stakeholders.
BSS of the application platform engineering can minimize the resistance encountered by
developers when completing daily tasks. Recommended tools and best security practices
are also provided to reduce the cognitive burden of developers, while retaining a certain
degree of freedom. All of these efforts have ensured that the platform can reduce the cog-
nitive burden and achieve an appropriate balance between developers’ needs for self-ser-
vice and support.
5.2.8 Automatic Operation & Maintenance Based on Digital

Immune System
Due to the diversity in system composition, business and technology of BSS in the 6G era,
the complexity has increased, and the difficulty of preventing and repairing faults will
increase exponentially compared to the 5G era. Therefore, it is very important to introduce
digital immune system technology to achieve automatic operation & maintenance.
Digital immune system (DIS) [44] combines practices and technologies such as observabil-
ity, AI enhancement testing, chaos engineering, self-healing, site reliability engineering
and software supply chain security to improve the flexibility of products, services, and
56
systems while reducing business risks (as shown in Figure 5-5). A powerful digital im-
mune system can make applications more resilient and quickly recover from faults,
thereby protecting applications and services from abnormal impacts, such as software
faults or security issues. The digital immune system can reduce business continuity risks
when critical applications and services are severely damaged or completely stopped. En-
terprises face unprecedented challenges in ensuring a resilient operating environment and
accelerating digital delivery and reliable user experience, and they want to respond to
market changes and rapid innovation quickly. Users expect not only perfect functions, but
also high performance, transaction and data security, as well as satisfactory interaction.
Figure 5-5 Digital Immune System Technology
BSS using a digital immune system will create an excellent maintenance experience while
reducing system failures (research has shown that it can reduce system downtime by up
to 80%), enable the system to quickly recover from faults, and directly convert the reduced
losses into higher revenue.
5.2.9 Data Capitalization Based on Data Fabric

As comprehensive information service providers in the information society, communica-
tion operators have the natural advantage of data pipelines. The information fingerprints
of people in the modern society are recorded in detail in their network systems and busi-
ness platforms. Communication operators have accumulated data for many years, and
57
have five characteristics (namely “true, large, fast, flexible and complete”) in data re-
sources. Among them, “true” refers to the authenticity and high accuracy of operator data;
“large” refers to massive operator data covering core production operations, customer
contact, customer behavior perception, network elements, etc.; “fast” refers to high time-
liness of operator data; “flexible” refers to scalability, loose coupling and flexible opening
of operator data; and “complete” refers to the coverage of structured, semi-structured,
unstructured multiple data types and multiple data sources. The data of telecom operators
involves all the businesses including mobile voice, fixed phone, fixed network access and
wireless Internet access, etc. as well as public customers, government & enterprise cus-
tomers, and household customers. Moreover, contact information from all types of chan-
nels such as physical channels, electronic channels and direct sales channels will also be
collected. The development of 6G will further enhance the above features, such as its joint
communications and sensing ability with native intelligence, which will greatly improve
the speed, accuracy and information value of data acquisition. However, in order to meet
the large-scale connection, ultra-low latency communication and diversified customiza-
tion requirements in the 6G era, distributed deployment of 6G networks will become in-
evitable. Meanwhile, due to security and privacy considerations, enterprise users have
high requirements for the privacy and confidentiality of their production and business data,
and there is a strong demand for data not leaving the plant. This requires that the network
not only achieves local transmission and analysis of data, but also achieves local trans-
mission processing of control signaling. Therefore, how to effectively manage distributed
data assets and assist operators’ lean operation will be an important issue in 6G BSS.
58
Figure 5-6 Data Fabric Technology
Gartner defines Data Fabric as an integration layer that includes data and connection.
Through continuous analysis of existing, discoverable and inferable metadata assets, Gart-
ner supports the design, deployment, and use of data systems across platforms, thus ena-
bling flexible data delivery. Data virtualization is one of the key technologies in imple-
menting a data fabric architecture. It can access data from the source without moving it
and can shorten the time to achieve business value through faster and more accurate que-
ries. Specifically, it includes functions such as cross-platform agile integration, unified
semantics, creation of data APIs (supporting technologies such as SQL, REST, OData,
and GraphQL) with low code and intelligent cache acceleration. Data fabric can be taken
as a virtual network [45], where each node is a data source. This network represents a virtual
connection that allows data to flow quickly online and provide unified external services
(as shown in Figure 5-6).
The distributed deployment of 6G networks results in data assets being hidden in a mixed
combination of infrastructure environments. Due to the long data preparation cycle, users
need a wide range of data management functions to overcome complex constraints such
as multi suppliers, multi-cloud and evolving data environments. Data fabric technology is
designed to address the challenges of complex mixed data environments. Essentially, the
data fabric supports various data management requirements to provide the correct IT ser-
59
vice levels across all different data sources and infrastructure types. It operates as an inte-
grated framework for deploying, managing, moving, and protecting data across multiple
isolated and incompatible data centers. As a result, organizations can invest in infrastruc-
ture solutions that meet their business needs without worrying about data service levels,
access and security.
5.2.10 Maximizing Data Value Based on Privacy Computing

Operator data is valuable not only for operators’ business operations but customers in
other industries. Operator data has many valuable application scenarios in industries such
as finance, tourism, education and automobile, and can output value to customers in these
industries. Taking the financial industry as an example, the payment information, location
information and interest preferences of operators’ customers can bring greater value to the
business operations of customers in the financial industry. According to the true, accurate,
and sustainable data resource supply of operators, financial institutions can further enrich
and supplement the labels and portraits of financial customers, assist financial customers
to gain in-depth insight into user’s behavior and interest preferences, and can play a role
in scenarios such as identity verification, credit reporting, fraud prevention, precision mar-
keting and site selection. The application value of operator data of the 5G era in other
industries has been widely and fully verified in practice.
How to ensure that operators can achieve deep data convergence and data value release
across organizations while ensuring data security and compliance? Privacy computing[46]
provides a perfect solution to solve this problem. Privacy computing is a computing theory
and methodology oriented to the full life cycle protection of private information as well
as a computable model and axiomatic system for privacy metric, privacy leakage cost,
privacy preservation and privacy analysis complexity in case the ownership, management
and utilization rights of private information are separated (as shown in Figure 5-7). Via
privacy computing, the balance and common development among “data silo interconnec-
tion”, “data privacy preservation” and “business development” can be achieved. Privacy
computing can realize the flow and sharing of data “value” and “knowledge”, and can
significantly improve the efficiency of data cross-domain convergence. At present, it is
helping operators to achieve faster data cross-domain monetization.
60
Participant 1
Return
Encryption statistical
processing results
Local
Return node
statistical Encryption
results processing
Participant N Local Local Participant 2

node node
Encryption Return
processing statistical
results
Local
node
Return
statistical Encryption
results processing
Participant…
Figure 5-7 Schematic Diagram of Secure Multi-party Computing
Privacy computing is a general term for the technical routes to solve the problem of infor-
mation confidentiality in computing links during data circulation. It may be defined as a
kind of technical set or system that realizes data analysis, computing and application with-
out raw data transmitted or with raw data preserved. From the perspective of technical
mechanism, there are mainly three technical routes for privacy computing, namely, secure
multi-party computing based on cryptography, federated learning based on distributed
training and computing environment based on trusted hardware. With the development of
Native Network Security and Native Intelligence under the further convergence of 6G
computing and networks, operators can provide efficient and reliable privacy computing
capabilities for releasing their data value by establishing trusted computing nodes with
secure multi-party computing or federated learning (as shown in Figure 5-8).
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Federated learning model
Collaborative
④ party C ④
③ ③
Model A Model B
①
Encryption model training ②

Data from A Data from B
②
① Send the public key

Encryption processing
② Exchange intermediate results
③ Calculate gradient and loss
Data Holder A Data Holder B

④ Update the model
No data exchange
Figure 5-8 Schematic Diagram of Federated Learning
5.2.11 PaaS Capability Evolution Based on Sustainable Cloud

Computing Model
PaaS is an intermediate layer in cloud computing. In many people’s eyes, PaaS layer is
less closely related to green & low carbon than the IaaS layer. However, PaaS service can
better and more efficiently schedule and manage IaaS resources; establish common ser-
vices to provide service reusable for SaaS-based applications, and help applications
achieve rapid innovation and reduce development volume, reduce operating expenses and
save energy costs, which are contributions made in term of the sustainability of PaaS ser-
vice in IT cloud service[47].
The ecological sustainability of PaaS service[48] is currently in the early stage of explora-
tion. Based on the own practice of BSS, the following key technologies can be on trial:
 Virtualization technology
Compared with the traditional virtualization technology at the IaaS layer, the
container technology widely used at the PaaS layer can significantly improve the
utilization rate of resources. Containerization technology reduces the use
granularity of resources from level GB to level MB, which makes the application
and release of resources more accurate, thus reducing the invalid input of
resources. At the same time, virtualization technology at the PaaS layer can
directly run assembled applications on physical servers, which further reduces
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the performance overhead incurred by IaaS layer virtualization by about 30%. By

reducing the number of servers with virtualization technology, IT teams will
reduce the maintenance time of physical hardware and IT infrastructure, thus
improving team efficiency and productivity. At the same time, fewer physical
servers adopted will directly reduce energy consumption[49].
 Multi-level resource pool monitoring, scheduling and recycling
After the introduction of container technology, multi-level resource supply and

scheduling will be formed at the PaaS layer. The IaaS layer will provide basic
computing and storage resources to the PaaS layer, and form a first-level resource
pool at the PaaS layer, some of which will be used to provide basic resources for
containerization technology. The container resource pool will provide secondary
resources to different tenants. When tenants apply for resources, in order to
ensure the stability of the business, the resources will be generally allocated
according to the peak usage of the business. According to the actual situation
during the operation, the peak usage of business only accounts for a small part of
the total operation time. This means that the resources allocated for the peak are
wasted most of the time. Through monitoring, scheduling and recycling with
multi-level resource pools, the idle resources of tenants can be recovered to the
secondary resource pool for tenants, and through real-time monitoring, the
resources can be supplied to tenants in time when their business volume increases.
In this way, the overall resource utilization rate at the PaaS layer will be improved,
and the resource demand will be reduced accordingly, thus reducing the resources
consumption at the IaaS layer, the server investment and the corresponding
cooling energy consumption investment, and improving the sustainability.
 Common capability reuse
In recent years, the construction of the Middle Platform in China has been in full
swing in industries with successful digital transformation. The core of the Middle
Platform strategy is to capitalize IT capabilities and enhance the reuse capability
of IT assets. Relying on PaaS platform, construct atomized microservices and
provide life cycle management for microservices. By capability exposure,
building a large PaaS ecosystem, empowering SaaS business development, and
gradually transforming business coding into capability arrangement, the business
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development efficiency is greatly improved, and various manpower and material

resources incurred by repeated development will be reduced, thus lowering
carbon emissions and improving ecological sustainability.
 Cross-cloud dynamic scheduling technology
Because the underlying layer supports and manages the resource pools of
different cloud data centers, it is necessary to support the scheduling of different
resource pools at the underlying layer when the PaaS layer is deployed or flexibly
expanded, which involves the opening of possible heterogeneous resources and
networks. On the scheduling algorithm, the perception capability of renewable
resources shall be supported, for example, sensing that the data resource pool of
a cloud service provider is green and renewable, while the resource pool of
another service provider uses traditional fossil fuels. In order to improve
ecological sustainability, it is necessary to identify the resource types in the
scheduling algorithm, so as to achieve the best scheduling scheme in line with
sustainability.
5.2.12 Cloudified Architecture Based on High Performance

Computing
High performance cloudified architecture is a high performance computing service model
combined with cloud computing technology, with high performance computing as the core
of service, cloud computing as the technical means of service model innovation, and
multi-cloud interconnection as the scalable support of service capability. On this basis, the
HPC Cloud will be deeply integrated with technologies such as big data and AI to provide
integrated intelligent computing service capabilities and realize the scalability of HPC
Cloud capabilities oriented to the application needs of the industry.
To realize BSS high performance cloudification[50], the followings shall be included in

operation management, architecture, technology and operations management:
 Operation management: Integrated operation
The cloudification of BSS is to improve operational efficiency and reduce

operating costs, especially IT costs. At present, telecom operators adopt partition-
based and region-based operation management modes. Different services fixed
network, (mobile network and broadband) are operated by different business
64
units, and different regions are operated by different subsidiaries or subnets.

However, in this way, it is difficult to exploit the collaboration advantages,
resulting in low overall operational efficiency and poor service experience for the
whole network. So it is necessary to integrate cross-department business
processes and realize the integrated operation of different subnets.
The changes in operation mode and business process involve management reform,
which is a long-term process and needs the firm determination of operator
decision-makers to realize. Integrated operation not only improves operational
competitive strength and efficiency, but also lays a foundation for the maximum
sharing of IT resources from hardware to application software. From the aspect
of business, the differentiated support by cloudification of BSS for operation is a
key issue, which must be supported by multi-tenant mode via full servitization
with business functions, flexible business rules and process management.
 Application architecture: Separation of functional and non-functional charac-

teristics
In terms of application architecture, it must completely isolate the functional

characteristics (business logic) and non-functional characteristics (deployment,
performance, reliability, scalability and maintainability) of software through the
business platform layer during the cloudification of BSS, to realize the dynamic
deployment mechanism, on-demand dynamic scalable mechanism and self-
healing mechanism based on SLA without increasing the complexity of
application logic.
That is to say, SLA may not be considered when realizing presentation logic,
function logic, data storage and access logic of business function, and SLA
protection is completely handled by the business platform layer. According to the
requirements of SLA, including response time, processing time limit, allowable
interruption time, the business platform layer deploys the application in a suitable
hardware environment (for example, cluster deployment shall be used for high
availability) and realizes dynamic scalability via the real-time monitoring of SLA.
For example, if the business platform layer finds that there is a lagging trend for
the response time of the application with the increase of load, it will allocate a
new host from the resource pool, conduct on-demand deployment for the
application, and then modify the route to allocate the extra load to the new host,
65
maintaining the SLA unchanged. When the service platform layer finds that the
load processed by the host drops to a certain extent, it will modify the route,
accumulate the load on a small number of hosts, release the idle hosts, unload the
application deployment, and put it back into the resource pool.
For another example, if the business platform layer found that with the increase
of data volume of the data sheet, the data access speed decreases, resulting in an
overall SLA decrease, at this time, the system will dynamically split the data in
the data sheet, distribute them to multiple databases, modify the data route, and
allocate the access request to multiple databases, thus maintaining SLA. By the
same mechanism, when faults occur at different levels such as database, host and
storage, the application can automatically recover from the faults and maintain
the stability of SLA.
In order to meet the requirements of quality of service, the hardware
configuration of traditional BSS usually meets the peak processing load, which
is 2 ~ 3 times the average processing load. At the same time, traditional BSS
adopts static application deployment mode, so even if the peak time of different
applications is different, it is impossible to balance the use of hardware resources
by making use of the staggered peak time. The above factors lead to the low
overall utilization rate of hardware, with an average utilization rate of about
30%~40%. Technically speaking, after realizing the dynamic deployment of
applications, the utilization rate of hardware resources can be improved and the
cost of IT construction can be reduced. For example, the idle resources of the
settlement system during the day can be released and used by CRM and billing
systems when they are in high traffic demand.
 Technical architecture: Separation of business and technology
In terms of technical architecture, the business platform layer will completely

isolate business functions from infrastructure (hardware, middleware, database,
etc.). The engineering of service functions does not depend on specific
technologies, and the service platform layer adopts fully distributed application
and data architecture. So operators can choose appropriate technologies to meet
service requirements from the comprehensive consideration of cost and
efficiency. Traditional BSS is often bound with specific technologies during
design, for example, adopting centralized architecture suitable for minicomputers
66
instead of distributed architecture, so it is impossible to adopt blade servers with

lower cost conveniently.
For another example, traditional BSS generally adopts centralized database
architecture. With the increase in users and transactions, centralized databases
will gradually become the bottleneck of system reliability and performance.
Moreover, a small problem with the centralized database will affect the service
experience of all customers. The architecture of a traditional BSS system strongly
depends on a centralized database. If being changed to distributed database
architecture, the application transformation workload is huge and the feasibility
is little. Therefore, the prime balance between cost and quality of service may be
achieved only by completely separating business functions from the
infrastructure layer in the architecture.
 Operations management: Automation and intelligence
Cloudified BSS needs to realize intelligent automated management of operation

& maintenance. Traditional manual maintenance process leads to frequent
business interruptions and human errors, for example, simple system expansion
requires long-term business interruptions, which affects the quality of service for
customers. Only by setting rules in advance to realize automated upgrades and
fault correcting, can the quality of service for customers be improved.
5.2.13 Intelligent Ubiquitous Scheduling of Computing Power

Based on Different Hardware Platforms
In the 5G era, due to the gradual migration of communication network infrastructure from
a dedicated hardware platform to a general hardware platform, basic hardware based on
architectures such as x86 and ARM has been widely adopted, and computing power con-
structed mainly based on heterogeneous chips such as GPU, NPU and FPGA will become
the global mainstream in the next 5~10 years. This trend puts forward higher requirements
for intelligent ubiquitous scheduling of computing power based on different hardware
platforms.
To realize the ultimate performance release of intelligent computing power, in the archi-
tecture of 6G BSS, it needs to consider the horizontal collaboration of computing, network
and storage, and the vertical collaboration of software platform and hardware resources,
so as to support the continuous enrichment of intelligent business application scenarios of
67
6G. Such demand promotes the development and innovation of intelligent computing
power ubiquitous scheduling technology to meet 6G and future business requirements.
For example, the XPU chip platform and its software tools (such as OpenVINO, BigDL
and Analytics Zoo) based on Intel Xeon scalable processor accelerated by built-in AI can
help realize computing-aware scheduling and optimization across different hardware plat-
forms, and also meet the computing and intelligent processing requirements of 6G and
future business requirements. On such a platform, intelligent computing power can be
fully utilized, and can also help promote the continuous development and innovation of
intelligent application scenarios. Therefore, intelligent ubiquitous scheduling of compu-
ting power based on different hardware platforms has become one of the key technologies
to realize 6G and future business applications. This technology will help improve the sta-
bility, security and flexibility of the network, so as to meet the changing business require-
ments and consumer requirements.
68
VI. 6G BSS Potential Architecture Evolution
6.1 6G BSS Design Methodology

Operation management capability, including a series of activities such as planning, or-
ganizing, commanding, coordinating and controlling the production and operation activ-
ities of enterprises, is the core competitiveness of enterprises and plays a critical role for
all enterprises. Enterprise digital intelligence is to digitize business activities by scien-
tific and technological means and provide managers with all information for observation
and insight into various matters, based on which the managers will be able to make ra-
tional management decisions, optimize the allocation of resources and enhance eco-
nomic benefits.
6G BSS system is an effective tool to improve operators’ digital intelligent operation

and management capability. It is of critical importance to know how to plan its core
functional architecture model and realize the closed-loop management of the enterprise.
PDCA, as a kind of management thought, was first put forward by American quality
management expert Walter A. Shewhart, and then adopted, publicized and popularized
by W. Edwards Deming, so it is also called Deming Cycle (as shown in ). From the
planning and continuous improvement of quality management activities to the operation
management field in all walks of life, Deming Cycle becomes the thinking foundation
and method for enterprise comprehensive operation management. The core is the PDCA
cycle, which divides the quality management of enterprise operation into four phases,
namely Plan, Do, Check and Act, which requires all the work to be planned, the plan to
be implemented and the implementation effect to be checked, with the successful ones
being included in the standard, and the unsuccessful ones being left to be solved in the
next cycle[51, 52, 53, 54, 55].
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• Policy
• Specific
• Goal
• Activity P D operations
• Implement
planning
the plan
• Confirm the
• Check the
success
results
• Improve the
failure A C • Analyze the
success and
• Improve next
failure
time
Figure 6-1 PDCA Operation Management Model
As a new generation of business innovation platform, 6G BSS can take PDCA as the
core operation management model to realize PDCA architecture via digital intelligence
technology, comprehensively covering operators’ staff, property and belongings as well
as production, supplying and marketing, and building a complete management cycle
from strategy to implementation; in addition to the process service in the enterprise in-
formatization age, it is also necessary to integrate data intelligence in the operation man-
agement process, and support the real-time control and lean operation of operators’ 6G
services through data-driven intelligent converged services. Therefore, in the design of
PDCA cycle architecture for operation management of 6G BSS, it is required to support
the domain-based workflow in various domains horizontally and realize PDCA closed-
loop management in various domains driven by digital intelligence; it is required to re-
alize the integration and coordination of various domains vertically in different links
such as PDCA, integrate the operation management and control of various domains from
the perspective of the overall strategy of enterprises, empower enterprises with global
perception and real-time control, and support the continuous circulation and improve-
ment of operation management via the convergence of process and data intelligence, so
as to realize the refined operation management and control of enterprises. Specifically:
 Horizontally, it is required to realize the closed-loop process from plan, do,

check and act in the four major domains of resource, production, business
and ecosystem:
Operators need 6G BSS to realize the digital operation management

architecture from operation goal, planning, business implementation, business
70
performance and management control in different domains. At the strategic

level, the whole business activities form a complete PDCA management cycle
from the enterprise operation plan of 3~5 years, the annual business plan, the
production implementation plan to the actual purchase, sales and production
order implementation, as well as the management control, performance analysis,
problem improvement and implementation adjustment in the business
implementation process.
 Vertically, it is required to realize the integration and collaboration

throughout all domains and links through the operation domain and the
experience domain:
PDCA architecture provides a brand-new digital intelligent enterprise operation

management mode, and every business economic activity in each functional
domain can be transmitted and converted into data description at the level of
operation control and experience management in real time, thus empowering
enterprises with global perception and real-time control in operation
management and total experience.
Compared with TM Forum ODA functional architecture, 6G BSS, a new generation of

business innovation platform based on PDCA, emphasizes the introduction of digital
intelligence means for analysis and check in the process management after defining stra-
tegic planning and operation implementation in eTOM business architecture, and takes
appropriate actions to improve the planning implementation process. This change in
management operation domain will promote the rapid iteration and continuous innova-
tion of the 6G digitalization business. Learning from the mode of Internet vendors’ open-
ing IaaS and PaaS services in the work domain, 6G BSS decomposes ODA’s Production
into resource domain and production domain, operates computing network resources
based on 6G network in a more open way, and further integrates DOICT to create corre-
sponding production capability. At the same time, the evolution of the business model
oriented to the 6G era upgrades ODA’s Party Management to the ecosystem domain,
which is no longer limited to the management of cooperative participants, but more sys-
tematic management of rights and incentive methods, and establishes a digital ecological
collaboration support system with operators as the core. In addition, the total experience
through the whole digital support system will become the key to establishing customer-
71
centric sustainable development in the 6G era, and it is necessary to manage the digital-
ization of all participants in the ecosystem by means of digital intelligence.
6.2 6G BSS Architecture Overview

To sum up, in order to meet the needs of convergence and evolution of 6G key business
scenarios and DOICT, 6G BSS architecture will be designed with the center on “digital
intelligent operation capability and domain process optimization”. Through the evolu-
tion of architecture, 6G BSS will efficiently support the ecological construction of oper-
ators in the 6G era, and improve customer business experience satisfaction and agility
of digital business innovation.
First of all, 6G BSS needs to design a closed-loop operation process in the four major
domains of ecosystem, business, production and resource from top to bottom according
to the future fully open and ecological business model and PDCA architecture:
 Ecosystem domain: In the 6G era, the first thing operators need to consider is
what kind of business ecosystem to establish and how to maintain it through
digital operation means. Therefore, 6G BSS shall provide suitable value orien-
tation, collaboration mode and operation mode for different partners, such as
traditional supply chain mode, operator-centered platform empowerment mode,
and decentralized innovation mode established through rights and drives. Alt-
hough the above modes are different in connotation and form, how to realize
the closed loop of operation process can be unified according to PDCA archi-
tecture. Based on PDCA’s definition of the operation process, 6G BSS shall
realize value planning, ecological collaborative innovation interaction, ecolog-
ical operating benefit analysis and corresponding rights and drives under differ-
ent modes, and constantly iterate and optimize. In terms of function, the main
functions of the 6G BSS ecosystem domain include new partner management,
customer intention management, trusted transaction management, multi-party
intelligent bargaining management, smart contract management, ecological
value analysis and the like. In terms of ecological construction, in addition to
the traditional supply chain ecosystem for communication operators and the
cloud computing service ecosystem established in the 5G era, it is necessary to
pay more attention to the data value service ecosystem, metaverse digital asset
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transaction ecosystem and content creator ecosystem construction in the form

of decentralized organization.
 Business domain: After establishing the enterprise value orientation and the
corresponding business ecosystem, aiming at key markets and based on key
products, operators and partners will complete the digital intelligent closed-loop
operation of relevant market product planning, product ordering and sales, cus-
tomer operation analysis and supply & marketing strategy adjustment through
the digital support system provided by 6G BSS. In the business domain, the
main functions of 6G BSS include dimension management, measurement man-
agement, product life-cycle management, commodity dynamic portfolio man-
agement and customer operation analysis, etc. In the 6G era, operators can sup-
port more diverse products and services, including not only enhanced holo-
graphic communication services, immersive experience services, Joint Com-
munications and Sensing services, air-space-ground joint communication ser-
vices, but also distributed intelligent services, twin aggregate services, zero-
trust secure and trusted services, brain-computer communication services and
so on. However, it is difficult for operators to provide full-stack solutions only
with their products and services, whether for consumers or industrial enterprises.
Therefore, in order to provide competitive solutions by strengthening ecological
cooperation, 6G BSS must be more open and can effectively support closed-
loop business operations for different business models.
 Production domain: Products and services must be built on efficient and agile
production capability. In the 6G network design, the trend of technology con-
vergence is strengthened, creating technical and commercial conditions for
building an operator-centered development ecosystem. For PDCA architecture
design, operators can build an open developer ecosystem with the support of
BSS functions in technical capability planning, capability development and de-
ployment, capability utilization and analysis and capability upgrade and mainte-
nance. Depending on the ecological collaboration of developers, a variety of
DOICT bearing business requirements can be transformed into native technical
components of distributed cloud, and provide high-quality and low-cost pro-
duction capability for business innovation via assembled architecture. The main
functions of the production domain include cloud-native technology component
73
management, integrated development management and related developer-ori-

ented toolkit management. Oriented to the convergence trend of digital-real un-
der Web3.0 and the accompanying comprehensive integration capability of
technologies, 6G BSS will become an integrator of technology integration, in-
cluding CT technologies such as information perception and semantic transmis-
sion brought by 6G network, digital native IT technologies such as XR for
metaverse, OT gradually maturing based on digital twin in physical industry,
and data intelligent DT in rapid development.
 Resource domain: 6G network strengthens operators’ capability to control the

infrastructure resources. On the one hand, via co-construction, sharing and in-
terconnection and intercommunication, operators expand the resource base of
connection services, including not only network resources such as ultra wireless
broadband, ultra-large-scale connection, local private network, space-air-
ground integrated communication, but also connection service sources such as
intelligent perception and high-accuracy positioning. On the one hand, facing
the demand for integrated basic resources of digitalization services, operators
further improve the layout of the resource domain through self-construction or
cooperation with cloud vendors, relying on technologies such as Computing-
Aware Networks. Based on PDCA architecture, 6G BSS provides cycle process
support for basic resource planning, resource procurement operation, opera-
tional efficiency analysis and resource optimization and adjustment in the re-
source domain. In terms of functions, the main functions include resource
scheduling management, resource life-cycle management, resource access au-
thentication service management, task-based resource metrics management and
the analysis & optimization of overall resource utilization. Computing-Aware
Network will be an integrated basic resource that operators focus on building,
in which different heterogeneous computing powers will evolve with the devel-
opment of services.
Secondly, in addition to supporting the closed loop of operation management process in

key domains, 6G BSS needs an enterprise-level operation management center to coordi-
nate various domains to complete integrated collaboration, control and optimization.
This White Paper positions the operation domain vertically distributed as the key support
system of enterprise strategic management.
74
 Operation domain: In the 6G era, operators can further connect B and M do-
mains through digital and intelligent convergence of business and finance, and
establish a full-link operation process supporting enterprise operation manage-
ment. According to PDCA mode, 6G BSS can set a closed-loop process of en-
terprise strategic planning, domain-based strategic driving, operating benefit
analysis and operating problem handling in the operation domain. Among them,
after formulating the overall strategic direction and financial objectives, the en-
terprise strategic planning is decomposed into ecosystem domain, business do-
main, production domain and resource domain to complete the detailed plan-
ning further, and then judge and make decisions by summarizing the planning
contents of various domains. The domain-based strategic drive provides a digi-
tal way for enterprise-level strategic tasks to drive real-time collaboration and
efficient implementation in related domains. In this process, all interactive in-
formation and data will be recorded in the support system of the operation do-
main. Operating benefit analysis will be carried out and predicted by intelligent
method against KPI target using operation data provided by enterprise-level big
data platform. Feasible treatment solutions will be recommended as much as
possible, which will be improved at the operational problem handling link. In
the 6G era, enterprise operations will be more ecological and open, so 6G BSS
may need to make intelligent strategic decisions and optimization not only ac-
cording to the internal data of enterprises, but also concerning the operational
data of ecological partners and competitors.
Finally, 6G BSS needs to establish an enterprise-level experience management center to

globally perceive and continuously improve the digital experience of customers, partners
and employees, so that the experience domain will provide stakeholders in the above
domains with the capability to evaluate and improve the digital experience.
 Experience domain: 6G BSS needs to strengthen the total experience and ac-
celerate the upgrade of multi-mode interactive experience brought by the 6G
network. On the one hand, the experience domain needs to enhance the man-
agement of the total experience for customers, employees and users through
new triggers such as customer avatars; on the other hand, it also needs to explore
the integrated experience brought by intelligent terminals, such as the robot, XR
human-computer interaction, brain-computer interface interaction and other
75
multi-mode interaction capabilities. The main functions of experience operation

include experience content loading and unloading management, intelligent ter-
minal parameter management, experience data collection management, experi-
ence content distribution management and service subscription management.
Overall, 6G BSS fully supports enterprises to complete top-level strategic planning, do-
main-based efficient collaborative implementation, and upgrade operational experience
through digital intelligence on an open architecture (as shown in Figure 6-2). On the one
hand, 6G BSS will further optimize the process oriented to the future, establish a domain-
based KPI system and smooth automated closed-loop operation; on the other hand, it
also strengthens the analysis and security check by means of digital intelligence, and
takes appropriate actions to improve the planning implementation process.
体验域（ Experience）
Total experience Multi-mode interaction
运营域（ Operation）
Strategic
Enterprise Implementation Implementation
collaborative
strategic planning effect check problem handling
implementation
︵
Ecosystem
生 Value orientation Ecological

态 for ecological
Business value Ecological benefit Right incentive
cooperative
域 partner
planning analysis measures
innovation
︶
︵
Business
业 Market product Sales of products

Key products in Business insight Adjustment of
务 planning
域 key markets and services analysis market strategy
︶
︵
Production
生 Technical
Capability Capability
产 Technical fault
DOICT capability
capability planning development scheduling
域 handling
deployment analysis
︶
︵
Resource
资
源 Core resources 基础资源规划资源调度管理资源效率分析资源优化调整
域
︶
Domain element 规划（ Plan）执行（ Do）检查（ Check）处理（ Act）
Figure 6-2 6G BSS Reference Architecture
At the same time, via virtualization hardware, multi-tenant architecture software and
domain-based construction, resource sharing in a wider range can provide operators with
lower cost and better experience services, realize BSS migration to the cloud, and meet
the maximum intensification and maximum efficiency of industrial value chain. Cloud-
ified 6G BSS is an evolved BSS system, which can better solve the goals difficult to
achieve by traditional BSS such as providing better service quality and customer expe-
rience with lower construction and operation & maintenance costs, and adapting to more
76
flexible business model changes. For example, an SLA-based self-healing mechanism

can speed up fault handling and improve customer experience; full sharing of resources
can reduce the cost of hardware procurement; intelligent automated management can
reduce operation & maintenance costs and the like.
Therefore, these functional upgrades of 6G BSS will not only greatly enhance the inter-
nal collaboration efficiency in various domains, but also effectively support external
ecological partners to participate in ecological construction in almost all domains in an
open form.
77
VII. 6G BSS Engineering Principles and

Recommendations
4G is a watershed in the development of BSS for operators. 4G and its previous services
mainly provide connection channels for C-terminal users. The core of services remains
unchanged, but the contents carried on the channels are expanding from voice, messages
and texts to images and data. BSS for 4G is designed to support standardized product
operation. It forms a structure with CRM and BOSS as the central support systems, fo-
cusing on internal supply chain system management and product operation business pro-
cess streaming.
Taking the Internet of Everything as its design goal, 5G is committed to providing com-
munication services such as massive and reliable connection for industry scenarios. The
customer group of operators has been greatly expanded, and the 2B industry has become
a breakthrough domain for operators to achieve growth. At the same time, the traditional
BSS system, oriented to the 2C industry and supporting standardized product operation,
is facing challenges. To this end, during 5G BSS (as shown in Figure 7-1) construction,
on the one hand, the system introduced the central platform system of cloud computing,
integrated resources, middleware, data, business components, etc., and provided com-
posable modules for thousands of businesses to meet the differentiated needs of 2B cus-
tomers efficiently; on the other hand, BSS began to gradually integrate the capability of
OSS internally, and open up to introduce partners’ capabilities externally to support op-
erators to carry out personalized ICT converged services.
As a general-purpose technology, 6G strengthens the vision of value spillover and is

committed to promoting the self-creation and self-evolution of social and economic val-
ues. Therefore, on the basis of deepening the digital operation of its own business, 6G
BSS will pay more attention to building the supporting capability of ecological operation,
forming a business innovation platform system, and promoting capability exposure,
technology convergence and ecological cooperation.
78
7.1 5G BSS Architecture and Extensibility

5G BSS is an essential change for operators from standard product operation to the per-
sonalized service operation, laying a specific technical and commercial foundation for
6G BSS.
Application
PC APP
interaction
Customer and product domain Billing and accounting domain

Business
SaaS
center Network and service interaction
Partner management domain
domain
I-PaaS Service integration platform Capability exposure platform
PaaS
General technology
T-PaaS
Elastic computing
IaaS Computing resource Storage resource Network resource
Figure 7-1 Status of 5G BSS Five-tier Architecture
Figure 7-1shows a certain operator’s BSS status and a typical BSS architecture for 5G[56,
57]
. Through the analysis of Figure 7-1, 5G BSS presents the following characteristics,
which build the foundation for the evolution of 6G BSS:
 Introducing cloud computing technology system, forming a support system of

hierarchical decoupling and modular delivery
a. Using cloud computing technology, change how device resources are

purchased and deployed according to systems and decouple business and
infrastructure resources.
b. 5G BSS expands the PaaS layer in the three-tier service architecture of
cloud computing, forming I-PaaS and T-PaaS, and accumulating the
capabilities of service integration capability components and IT technical
standard components related to BSS side.
c. Provide standardized capability opening and integration capabilities, and
empower business innovation based on standardized capability assets and
T-PAAS technology products.
79
 Domain-based design of business functions
5G BSS decomposes the business center into customer and product domain,
billing and accounting domain, network and service interaction data domain and
partner data domain. The customer and product domain provides the customer
full life cycle management functions, including the customer center, order
center, products/commodities center, service center, marketing center and so on.
The billing and accounting domain provides the functions of online
message/offline telephone bill collection preprocessing, batch billing,
accounting processing and management, comprehensive settlement and so on.
The network and service interaction data domain contains the collection of
related business and management data information owned by the domain,
including acceptance center and network policy management. The partner data
domain contains the process and data support required by the domain
application.
 Communication services extending to integrated ICT services
5G BSS not only considers the support of communication services, but also
provides personalized service support for customers, including:
 Service support based on 5G network capability exposure, such as QoS,

slicing and private network.
 CHBN convergence support for individuals, families, groups and new
businesses include 5G personal communication and home broadband
convergence and bundled services, 5G industry dedicated line services, and
various rights sharing services.
 Cloud and network converged services, for example, service support

capability of public cloud provided by operators, convergence and bundled
services of network products and cloud products, and opening of cloud and
network convergence.
7.2 Recommendations for Evolution towards 6G BSS

In the process of moving from 5G to 6G, BSS will fully absorb the existing architecture,
technical system and business model design, fully adopt the practice and exploration
achievements of the 5G+ era, and build a hierarchical evolution methodology.
80
7.2.1 Business-driven Gradual Evolution

Technological innovation drives the ever-changing business, which promotes the change
and evolution of the BSS. Only BSS that follows the business requirements and leads
the way appropriately can have excellent business support and monetization capabilities.
It can simultaneously release the flexibility of the huge system and promote the rapid
development of the business. Although the industry has made good explorations on the
application scenarios, key technologies and business models of 6G and a forward-look-
ing summary of 6G business support has been made, which is of excellent guidance, 6G
is far from reaching the phase of maturity in implementation for all technologies and
businesses. The business support update in the exploration period shall be gradually pro-
moted according to the needs and trends of the business, fully considering the stable
operation support of existing businesses and gradually providing forward-looking sup-
port for new business capabilities at the same time.
7.2.2 Evolution Based on Open Architecture

In the 6G era, the business support of communication industry needs to maintain good
business and technical exposure. Regarding business, it is necessary to provide openness
to branches at all levels, industry customers and external partners, and realize the support
for business innovation. Maintain good technical compatibility to adapt to the emerging
new technologies. On the basis of keeping the architecture openness, it is necessary to
further complete the ecosystem construction and form more monetization channels. It is
necessary to fully consider flexible performance support, tenant business data isolation,
system security, flexible combination, intelligent management and control, etc.
7.2.3 Full Migration to Public Cloud/on-Premise Cloud

With the continuous development of information technology, the mobile communication
industry has constantly undergone innovations and upgrades. As an essential part of the
mobile communication industry, 6G BSS of mobile communication network is always
improving and perfecting its function and performance. For 6G BSS, the traditional de-
ployment usually requires a large number of hardware devices and software platforms,
and needs to invest a lot of human resources for maintenance and management, which is
costly and complex to manage. To solve these problems, migrating 6G BSS to a public
cloud or on-premise cloud may be considered.
81
Migration of 6G BSS to a cloud platform can reduce hardware and software costs and
human resources investment, thus reducing the costs. Public cloud and on-premise cloud
platforms are provided with flexible scalability, and can quickly allocate and release re-
sources according to business requirements, thus improving flexibility and scalability.
Cloud platforms usually are provided with high availability and fault tolerance, which
can automatically implement fault tolerance and recovery when hardware or software
fails, thus improving the stability and availability of the system. In addition, cloud plat-
forms usually have better data security, providing various security measures which can
better protect the security of sensitive data. Fully migrating 6G BSS to the cloud plat-
forms can realize centralized management and monitoring, thus reducing management
complexity and workload. At present, 90% of foreign operators are migrating to the pub-
lic cloud, and most domestic operators in China are also implementing or preparing to
implement on-premise cloud and public cloud migration solutions.
The full migration of 6G BSS to the public cloud or on-premise cloud can bring many
advantages, including reducing costs, improving flexibility and scalability, improving
stability and availability, improving data security, simplifying management and so on.
These advantages can help operators better meet business requirements and enhance
their competitiveness and innovation capabilities. Therefore, it has become a trend and
inevitable choice to fully migrate 6G BSS to a public cloud or on-premise cloud.
7.2.4 Native Network Security System

According to the typical application scenarios of 6G, different from previous communi-
cation technologies and 5G, the definition of “person” in 6G is further generalized to
form a “body area network”, where the entities have the same identity to a certain extent,
but different signs; even if these entities have the same identity, when facing different
roles, their security and authorities shall be different. For example, the user is the owner,
and he/she shall have all the required authorities and capabilities. When facing the device
provider, it is entirely different, involving the owner’s privacy, so the differences in se-
curity and authorities are significant. The further intelligent connection between the per-
son, physical world and digital world will involve more physical and logical device en-
tities. So it is essential to know how to manage the security between these entities, per-
sons and services. The security of the Internet of Everything is different from the previ-
ous ones, such as inputting user name, password, and fingerprint. Because this kind of
82
security involves many devices and services, oriented to different users, different ser-
vices and scenarios and the devices shall operate independently and may switch identi-
ties at any time, the security requirements are much more complicated. Based on tech-
nologies such as Native Network Security mechanism established from native intelli-
gence and zero trust, 6G builds the security base of the whole BSS system. Native Net-
work Security is based on the real-time state of trustworthy relationship, behavior and
device scenario. It provides trust relationship, risk management, and control with AI’s
help and a safer, more flexible and reliable zero-trust security model.
7.2.5 Independent Evolution of Interaction Layer

With the rapid development of science and technology, human-computer interaction
technology is developing day and day rapidly from text console to CS single application,
from Web1.0 and Web2.0 to mobile Internet app and applet, from 5G XR to 6G holo-
graphic communication, body area network wearing and brain-computer interface, etc.
It is vital to separate the front-end interaction part from the service support part in BSS
system to ensure the independent evolution of the interaction layer. It will significantly
improve the business experience, meet the hierarchical service requirements at different
levels and expand the business market scope if the rapid upgrade of the interaction layer
of the front end is independently supported. Interaction layer independence is not only a
“separation of front and back ends”, but also a matter of operation & maintenance issues
such as unified access, unified portal, low code platform, zero-trust Native Network Se-
curity and industry application scenario support and DevOps to be considered.
7.2.6 Synchronization of Business, Data and Intelligence

6G businesses are more complex than those before, which involves not only all kinds of
clouds, networks, edges, computing, industries, security, intelligence, etc., but also more
new wearable devices, industrial control devices, space-air devices, etc. provided as well
as new models such as body area network, new dynamic intelligent price management,
new intention recognition, a large number of perception, timely service and other capa-
bilities provided. These complicated capabilities will further promote the closer collab-
oration and synchronous evolution of the trinity of business, data and intelligent plat-
forms. On the one hand, in the face of the complexity of business, from the perspective
of marketing, business opportunities, intentions, operation & maintenance, it is insepa-
rable from the assistance of AI. Only by making full use of the capability of AI can
83
automation, intelligentization, cost reduction and efficiency improvement, could shift

peak load and providing reasonable solutions be achieved; on the one hand, a large num-
ber of businesses offer massive amounts of data, and due to the complexity of 6G busi-
ness, the knowledge relationship between data is superimposed more intensively. Only
by making full use of big data technology as the foundation can a sound data foundation
guarantee for business and AI be provided, otherwise 6G intelligence will be empty talk;
on the other hand, AI will become more mature in 6G businesses, such as 6G dynamic
pricing, intention perception and recognition, recommendation of integrated solutions,
and QoE of perceived data convergence, which will provide unprecedented opportunities
for the development of AI.
7.2.7 Rapidly Empower Enterprise Customer through

Ecosystem
6G is more oriented to toC businesses on the basis of 5G B2B2X, while for 6G empow-
ered vertical industries oriented to toC, toH, toF and other businesses, it shall not only
consider 6G technology, business open architecture and ecological construction, at the
same time, but also consider the rapidly empowered vertical industries’ own business
ecosystem construction and rapid business refinement, including ecosystems that are not
limited to technology, business, operation, management, cooperation, self-service, etc.;
because vertical industries are subject to requirements in business security, user security,
data security or security regulations, etc., on the one hand, it is necessary to consider
adopting refining methods similar to 5G UPF, SMF, etc. to rapidly deploy to the edge
nodes of the park to ensure that data will not leave the park and the data are isolated, etc.;
on the other hand, it is also necessary to help vertical industries intelligently solve oper-
ation and operation & maintenance problems via federated learning, so as to help vertical
industries reduce costs and increase efficiency. Only by assisting vertical industries to
support and develop business quickly can 6G business bloom.
84
VIII. Summary and Prospect

As the first forward-looking and systematic white paper on 6G BSS in the world, after
reviewing the development history of BSS in different generations, combined with the
overlapping development characteristics of communication businesses and Internet busi-
nesses, based on BSS reference architecture in the communication domain and the busi-
ness model in the Internet industry, this White Paper puts forward the 6G-oriented do-
main-based business support model and the development vision of 6G BSS. In this White
Paper, the characteristics of 6G BSS integrated communication business and Internet
business in the future will gradually step out of the double closed-loop systems of “in-
ternal support” and “external empowerment”, releasing more business innovation and
business model innovation for the industry. Based on this prediction, this White Paper
divides the core functions of 6G BSS into four domains: resource, production, business
and ecosystem, with two domains of operation and experience applied through the above
four core functions. Finally, based on the methodology system of PDCA, this White Pa-
per presents the functional architecture and thirteen potential key technologies of BSS
for 6G.
During the continuous transformation of operators’ BSS for the future, 5G BSS has pro-
vided a good development foundation for 6G, including the evolution of cloud compu-
ting technology systems and the scalability of service-based communication capability,
etc. However, the non-standard, personalized and ecological win-win operation mode
for the 2B industry still needs further exploration and iteration. Therefore, based on the
goal of 6G commercialization in 2030, this White Paper makes the following prospects
for the development phases of 6G BSS:
In 2025, the characteristics and technical system of 5G BSS will be inherited and iterated
and the sharing capability of the resource domain and the flexibility capability of the
production domain will be realized first; a preliminary exploration will be made on the
scenario-based experience capability and operation streaming; related vital technologies
such as interactive mode upgrade based on intention perception, intelligent customer
avatar, visual operation based on intelligent digital twins, distributed application based
85
on cloud-edge-terminal integration, PaaS capability based on sustainable cloud compu-

ting model and cloudified architecture based on high performance will be adopted in
priority.
In 2027, the capability oriented to the flexibility of the production domain will be further
evolved; minimalist development will be provided based on super automation and plat-
form engineering, and related trusted identity authentication and Native Network Secu-
rity capabilities will be further strengthened; in terms of diversified capability building
of business domain, the construction of joint communication, sensing and computing
service and air-space-land integration service primarily provided by 6G will be sup-
ported and QoPE operation mode and new trading capability based on blockchain will
be primarily explored.
In 2030, in the middle and late phases of 6G development, with the iterative evolution
of business models, some cooperation paradigms will be adopted, the valuation capabil-
ity of the ecosystem domain will be further evolved in BSS, and new business models
will be piloted; the key products and services in the business domain will be supported
by the full life cycle system combined with the business model design in the ecosystem
domain to achieve the internal operation digitalization promotion and the external value
flow closed loop. At this phase, the ecological valuation of data exchange capability and
automated capability of operation & maintenance need to be enhanced, and related tech-
nologies such as data capitalization based on data fabric, data value maximization based
on privacy computing, automated operation based on self-adaptive AI, and automated
operation & maintenance based on digital immune system will be fully implemented.
86
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White Paper on 6G BSS Technologies

Jointly released by:

Institute for AI Industry Research, Tsinghua University

China Telecom Research Institute

China Mobile Information Technology Center

China Unicom Software Research Institute

China Broadcasting Network Mobile Network Co., Ltd.

Intel (China) Co., Ltd.

Cite This White Paper

5.2.13 Intelligent Ubiquitous Scheduling of Computing Power Based on

II. Evolution of CSP Business and BSS

Figure 2-1 Intergenerational Characteristics of BSS of Operators

2.1 BSS Characteristics in Communication Generation

2G BSS: Three-tier architecture and monolithic service

Telecommunication Management Forum (TM Forum), established in 1988, is a world-

The functional design of BSS has the following characteristics:

 A new cooperation paradigm was introduced. In the 2G era, partners began to

In terms of technical support, BSS has the following characteristics:

 Three-tier architecture: In the 2G era, the design philosophy of “high

technical architecture and the formation of standard components. Personal

 Business-level siloed application: In the 2G era, no systematic business

3G BSS: Service convergence

At this phase, the design of BSS has the following characteristics:

 More comprehensive functional coverage: Supporting voice, SMS, MMS, data

 Customer-centric: Although a customer-user-account model was established in

4G BSS: SOA, flow management and digital business

 Flow management capability is introduced: It serves as the key to adapt to

intelligence, big data technology is used to enhance product experience, such as

 SOA architecture: In order to support a large number of innovative services in

5G BSS: Service cloudification and value network

 Government-enterprise model and SKU model: In order to better support the

 Strengthening the marketing and service of government & enterprise

 Emphasizing the application of small-fast-flexible innovation: 5G has

can use these scenario ecologies to quickly build industry application

 Business cloudification: Including two characteristics, i.e. cloud-edge

 Full intelligence injection: Cloud networks convergence and scenario ecology

2.2 Conclusion of BSS Evolution

 From the perspective of cooperation paradigm, BSS supports “internal and

 The evolution of BSS architecture is highly related to that of information

III. 6G Business Support Model

Figure 3-1 Business Model of Communication Operators

3.1 New BSS Requirements of 6G Typical Scenarios

 Immersive cloud XR based on 6G ultra wireless broadband

Tbps peak rate, 10-100Gbps experienced rate, sub-millisecond latency, a

 Universal IoT and Precise Machine control based on 6G ultra-large-scale

Machine control is a kind of enhanced machine communication. With the

machine control system will realize multi-dimensional cooperation between

 Holographic communication based on 6G ultra wireless broadband

Holographic communication service is an overall application solution of data

 Ultra-high precision positioning based on 6G joint communications and

 Enhancement of interpersonal communication by brain-computer

Relying on the future 6G mobile communication network, it is expected to make

 As the basic underlying demand, the upgrading of network capability will

 The ultimate network experience and proliferation of intelligence brought

 The breakthrough of the bottleneck in network connection has made 6G a

3.2 Reference Framework of BSS

 Business Architecture: Including key business process multi-layer model

 Information System Architecture: Including functional architecture and data

 Implementation Architecture: Including more than 50 REST-based Open